84 THE COAL QUESTION, 



these assumptions they calculate that our coal will last three 

 hundred and sixty years. 



The second alternative is to take a constant annual increase of 

 three roillion tons. On this supposition our coal would last two 

 hundred and seventy- six years — this has been already falsified, 

 for the very first year after the Eeport, the annual increase was 

 seven millions. "We can therefore scarcely accept this with any 

 confidence. 



There remains the third alternative, that is, that the yield 

 should remain constant and not increase from year to year, 

 taken at one hundred and fifteen million tons it would last one 

 thousand two hundred and seventy-three years — this again is 

 open to the same retort, that the first year the returns were 

 increased to one hundred and seventeen and one-third. At this 

 rate it would last only one thousand one hundred and sixty-three 

 years. There are other reasons why these two latter estimates 

 cannot be accepted. 



If the country is to continue prosperous, it seems impossible 

 but that the population should increase from year to year in a 

 geometrical ratio, and if so, it is absolutely impossible but that 

 the coal consumption should do similarly. If the population only 

 increases by a constant increment every year, that shows that the 

 prosperity is slowly declining ; capital must seek employment 

 elsewhere, and probably might assist in developing the American 

 coal-fields, and so bring on the contingency which we fear, quicker 

 even than a time of larger coal consumption: the increased 

 emigration would have the same efi'ect. 



"What seems most desirable is that we should go on prospering 

 and increasing our coal consumption and holding our supremacy 

 as long as we may, but it seems probable that there will come a 

 time when our coal getting dearer and dearer, our trade will 

 gradually become stagnant, and next diminish ; our population 

 must then remove to America and Australia, capital will follow, 

 the coal-fields of these countries will be opened up, our manufac- 

 tures will eventually almost cease, and we shall relapse into the 

 agricultural people that we were formerly. 



