384 Notices respecting New Books. 



sioned him much difficulty. Though, however, he sometimes does 

 intimate something like a wish that we had, in Great Britain, a 

 " corps of state engineers," he does not, like many theorists, allow this 

 personal inconvenience to himself to blind him to the true circum- 

 stances out of which the want of such " official" returns arises. He 

 is awake to the fact that such " official" completeness is only to be 

 obtained at the price of the sacrifice of national liberty and individual 

 independence. He candidly admits that such a " process must, at 

 all times, be unpopular, and the results extremely uncertain. This 

 species of investigation savours too much of scrutiny into the private 

 concerns of men." (P. xl.) The volume before us supplies additional 

 illustrations to the numberless ones which every honest inquirer will 

 find, of the importance to the prosperity of any country, and of any 

 branch of industry, that the latter should be unshackled by the med- 

 dling interference of government officials. It is a heavy price to pay 

 for the merely superficial, but never really reliable, result of regularly 

 published official returns, that enterprise should be checked, indi- 

 vidual energy cramped, self-dependence prohibited ; and that two 

 or three revolutions in a century should be necessary to keep the 

 state from the anarchy of despotism. There is too much tendency 

 in England at this time to follow in that centralizing path which 

 has brought so much suffering on the continent. The specious pre- 

 tences of schemers and theorists have already succeeded too far in 

 their attempts at this official interference. We are quite content to 

 have it still said that " as there is no system of supervision adopted 

 in the mining regions here, as in all the other countries of Europe, 

 it is impossible to arrive at any exact account of the quantity of 

 coal which is annually raised in the mines." (P. 259.) It is far 

 more satisfactory to us than the most perfect returns could be to 

 find it stated that " what the wise direction of public authority has 

 established in Germany, the spirit of association, the sentiment of 

 individual independence, the habit of calculation and of observation, 

 have consecrated in Great Britain." (P. cxxvi.) And, while we have 

 every reason to be grateful for " the bounteous supply of mineral 

 wealth which nature has assigned to England," we are infinitely more 

 grateful for the spirit of independence which has resisted that de- 

 spotic and pernicious " system of supervision" which has elsewhere 

 prevailed ; for that " enterprising character of her people, who have 

 turned that supply of mineral wealth to such good account." (P. 257.) 

 Mr. Taylor, very properly, does not confine himself to that de- 

 scription of mineral which is commonly called Coal. He includes 

 full and valuable information on the Lignites of the geological for-t 

 mations above the carboniferous group, and also on the recent Peat. 

 It is clear that, in strictness, all these may with exactly as much 

 propriety be included under the term " Coal" as the substance itself 

 which is commonly known by that name. The use of that substance 

 is comparatively modern ; but the word itself is an ancient Saxon 

 one, and one common indeed to the dialects of the old northern lan- 

 guages. As our author dates from the other side of the Atlantic, it 

 will not be out of place to illustrate this fact by a reference to an 



