80 THE COAL QUESTION. 



millions. It already reached one hundred and seventeen in 

 1871. 



I think you will admit that great weight must be given to 

 Professor Jevons' calculation, for the following reason. "When 

 he wrote, the last and greatest annual yield was ninety-two 

 millions, viz., that of 1864. He calculated that in 1871 the 

 annual consumption would be 117.9 millions. Now that 

 1871 has passed we can estimate the value of the prophecy made 

 seven years before-hand. The prophecy gave nearly one hundred 

 and eighteen millions; the actual fact was 1 17.35. His estimate 

 was nearer by four millions than the one which his most liberal 

 opponents stood out for. But Professor Jevons complains that 

 he never said our coal would be exhausted in one hundred and 

 ten years. The whole argument of his book goes to prove that 

 something else might possibly happen, something more disastrous, 

 namely, this: that this yearly rate of increase could not 

 continue, that prices must rise, that it would not pay to sink 

 deeper mines, that as our shallow mines got worked out our 

 prosperity would decline, and we should never have an oppor- 

 tunity of reaching those valuable stores of coal which we know 

 to be beneath us. Looked at from this point of view it is as 

 much as anything a question of price. It is the present 

 prosperity which will gradually work its own death, by raising 

 the price, owing to the deepening of the mines and the working 

 out of the more superficial seams. Perhaps the following 

 sentence may serve to propound his view; he quotes it himself 

 from a Committee on Coal Mines in 1843: "When the expense 

 of working British coal mines leaves no remuneration to the 

 capital and labour employed, when brought into competition 

 with the mines of other countries, then will they be as efi'ectually 

 lost to Britain for purposes of ascendancy, and their produce as 

 exports, as if no longer in physical existence ; and her supremacy 

 in the mechanical arts and manufactures, it may be feared, will be 

 superseded," 



We have therefore come to this point of the argument,— that 



