1866. | Our Coal Supply and our Prosperity, _ 469 
associated with our naval consumption, we will take the subject of 
our domestic needs. It is estimated, as already remarked, that one 
ton per head of the population is the quantity so employed, and 
therefore it may with confidence be said that between one-third and 
one-fourth of our whole coal supply is burned on the domestic hearth. 
In the course of his long argument, in which whole chapters 
are devoted to matters of secondary importance, we find only one 
mention of our domestic consumption of coal in Mr. Jevons’s book, 
and the perusal of the few words on the subject (p. 103) really 
leaves us greatly perplexed as to the cause of his reticence. He says 
that “if our population could be induced to abstain from the 
enjoyment of a good fire, the saving effected would not extend 
over more than about one-third of the total consumption of coal, 
the domestic consumption being on an average about one ton per 
annum per head of the population.” This may be a trifle not 
worthy of the consideration of a philosopher who deals in abstract 
questions of immense magnitude, but it is of sufficient moment to 
command our attention. 
The‘increase in the domestic consumption of coal is almost sure 
to keep pace with increasing population, unless some substitute is 
found for the present uncleanly and not very healthy* method of 
warming our houses and cooking our food, and it would seem at 
present that no item in our consumption is likely to be more 
regular than that one. 
It will be convenient first, to look at Mr. Jevons’s estimate of 
what would be our consumption “assuming the present rate of 
growth, 33 per cent. per annum, to hold” for a century from the 
present time. In that case, he says, our total consumption of coal 
in the year 1961 would be 2,607,500,000 tons. Retaining the 
same proportion for domestic uses, there would be applied to such 
purposes between 700 and 800 millions tons of coal, and Great 
Britain would possess a population represented by the same numbers, 
700 to 800 millions of inhabitants! We leave it to our readers 
who have perused Mr. Jevons’s work to decide whether we are not 
justified in this application of his logic and statistics ; in fact, such 
an inference appears inseparable from his argument. 
In his speech on moving for a Royal Commission, Mr. Vivian 
reduced another of Mr. Jevons’s geometrical calculations to an 
absurdity, by a somewhat similar process. “If the increased 
consumption of coal is to be calculated by geometric progression, I 
have an equal right to calculate the increased production of iron in 
the same manner, and therefore at the rate of 54 per cent. per 
annum. But I will be merciful and take it at 5 per cent.; then 
4,769,951 tons of pig-iron, increasing at the rate of 5 per cent. 
* We refer to its effect out of doors. 
+ ‘Specch on the Coal Question.’ Ridgway, 1866. 
