THE WARNING NOTE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 251, 21 November 1872, Page 8

THE WARNING NOTE.

Seven yeay.s .ago Profesao^^eyons stirrled the people of England fiUjt ,6*"* a, dream of" perpetual'- : prdsp'erity and.ondless empire 'by admonishing them that the coal-measures of the country were in process of. rapid exhaustion, and that the time wjis not very far distant when her manufacturing preeminence would depart .from her, and her material greatness .would become a thing of ti.e past, The Professor's ccl"_'tilntions ' w'f re impas^ied. and. iis prediction- defklerl la a g°od Tnany j quarters, but, in tha i long- run, they pro- |

duced a profound" impression on the public uiind; dndiu'tfieyear following a Boy'al Commission was appointed to take stock qL the national coal cellars and to report thereon. After pursuing its inquiries for, five years, tne result of its labours was presented to the Im-., perral Parliament in 1871, and. forms the subject of an ably-ymtten article in 'the. last number of jbhe "British Quarterly." The writer of the article demonstrates that the commissioners have formed, an extravagant, estimate of the quantity of coal available, on one hand, and have understated the prospective consumption on the other. He shows that '79,000,000,000 tons is all the coal of the existence of which, within our present limits of available working means, we have any evidence;"

and that the last ton of this will have been extracted in<73 years, that is to say, in 1945, whereas the commissioners are of opinion that this will not happen until 1982. In either case, the knowledge of the approaching exhaustion of the supply will necessarily occasion a rise in the price, and this will be still further augmented by the increased cost of Winning the coal, and

also by the obvious tendency of the wages of every description of labour to ascend. The effect of a famine of coal upon the industrial and social circumstances of Great Britain are almost incalculable. Those manufactures which depend for their successful prosecution, upon an abundant supply of j-heap fuel will transfer themselves to other countries in which — as in Canada and the United States — there are vast coal-fields almost untouched. England's supremacy in the fabrication of articles of hardware will depart from her. Torges and foundries wrll be closed one after the other ; Sheffield and Birmiughan will fall to decay ; the black country will cease to vomit forth flames and smoke ; and a million of people will be gradually thrown out of employment. These are the classes not inaptly characterised by the " British Quarterly " as the ' ; helots of the steam engine " — men, women, and children, who are hourly adding up a terrible sum, "which society will some lims have to liquidate;" they are the children of Israel of our own day, who are being employed in the erection of pyramids of wealth for their imperious -taskmakers, and who are denied the very straw which is essential to the formation of tho bricks. In other words, they have neither a sufficiency of food, light, and air, nor of wholesome rest and healthful recreation to enable them to build up those corporeal frames which are tho instruments they use in piling up the colossal fortunes of the modern Egyptians. If the present condition of these "helots" is such as, in the words of the reviewer, to be " full of the most serious menace of the framework of society," what will it be by-and-bye, when capital flows away into foreign countries, and when the operatives of populous cities, and extensive districts find the accustomed channels of employment dried up, and nothing but the "alternatives of starvation or spoliation presented to them? Will not the mother country, in this great extremity, witness the fulfilment of the Laureate's vaticination ? Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion creeping nigher. Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly dying fire. Will not the Philistines of the London press who, in the reading room of a luxurious club, pen flippant articles in which they scoflfiingly'ask, " Am I my brothei'd keeper ?" be instructed, by a social coriVulsion, which they had neither the wit to forsee nor the courage and capacity to avert, that these " helots of the steam-engine " are some-

thing more to them than " exceedingly

remote cousins whose original' connection with the family (of man ?) is by no means certain ?"

The more closely this coal question and its momentous consequences are studied, the stronger and clearer must grow the conviction in- the mind of e'verv reflective man -that it is the ■«beamnin<j of thG pnd— that: tho warning cry raised by Professor Jeyons, in 1865, forebodes that the decay of a great nation, and that to England the exhaustion of her coal-measures threatens to be a calamity as great and permauent as was the discovery of the sea-road to India, by Vasco de G-ama, to the trading republics of Venice and Genoa. We may contemplate such a prospect with sincere regret, but it would imply total blindness to all the lessons of history to indulge in the hope that Great Britain will be j exempt from the fate of- those empires ] Grecian ! and the l Roman --^which have enjoyed 'Jfehe primacy bf the world. \ Spain, Portugal, Italy, Holland, and Erance -have each, flourished; and each fallen Trcto its pride of place ; and' Germany jjigp,.., probably reached its* natural dbir&.'" But it is sufficient for our parposeT'tp observe that the "evidence, fet .strong that England must,' at no Alt*tant day, ; be called upon to confront a .new state of things, in which it will lose the advantages it has in the. past from • its abundant stores of coal. Whether the resoutc a of scien<e, or changing conditions of any kind may avail to mitigate the pressure of the emergency it is impossible now even to- imagine, but enough has been said to show the gravity of tlie question 'and the -r-ast j importance of tiie issue at 'tt&ke, — ,;

" Ausfcralsian,"