VIII COAL A NATIONAL TRUST 141 



mode of recklessly expending the stores in certain coun- 

 tries, while the same products remain totally unused inmany 

 of the countries they are exported to. For a number of 

 years we have been increasing our production of coal and 

 iron at an enormous rate, and sending vast quantities of 

 both to all parts of the world, civilized and uncivilized, and 

 have thereby produced, so far as I can see, only evil results 

 in various forms some of which have hitherto received 

 little attention. 



Briefly to state these : — In the first place, we have 

 seriousl}^, and perhaps permanently, increased the cost of 

 one of the chief necessaries of life in so changeable a 

 climate as ours — fuel. This is in itself so great and posi- 

 tive an evil that no considerations of mere convenience to 

 remote nations, such as the construction of railways in 

 New Zealand or in Honduras, ought even to be mentioned 

 as an excuse for it. Coal in winter is a question of comfort 

 or misery, even of life or death, to millions of the people 

 whose happiness it is our first duty to secure ; and shall 

 we coolly tell them that the Antipodes must have rail- 

 roads, and that landowners, coalowners, and contractors 

 must make fortunes, although the necessary consequence 

 is the yearly increasing scarcity of one of their first 

 necessaries and greatest comforts ? 



In the second place, by destroying for ever a consider- 

 able and ever-increasing proportion of the mineral wealth 

 of our country, we have rendered it absolutely less habit- 

 able and less enjoyable for our descendants, and we have 

 not done this by any fair and justifiable use for our own 

 necessities or enjoyments, but by the abuse of increasing 

 to the utmost of our power the quantity we send out of 

 the country, never mind for what purpose, so that it adds 

 to the wealth of our landowners, capitalists, and manu- 

 facturers. 



In the third place, we have brought into existence a 

 large population wholly dependent on this excessive pro- 

 duction and export of minerals, and therefore not capable, 

 under existing conditions of society, of being permanently 

 maintained on their native soil. In proportion as other 

 nations make use of their own mineral productions, and 



