THE LIMITS OF OUR COAL SUPPLY. 233 



dented height of prosperity, and its deficiency might have the effect 

 of lowering it to slow decline." 



* * "It raises up one people and casts down another ; it makes 

 railways on land and paths on the sea. It founds cities, it rules 

 nations, it changes the course of empires." * - " 



The fallacy of these customary attributions of social potency to 

 mere mineral matter is amply shown by facts that are previously 

 stated by the reviewer himself. He tells us that " the coal-fields of 

 China extend over an area of 400,000 square miles ; and a good geol- 

 ogist, Baron von Kichthofen, has reported that he himself has found 

 a coal-field in the province of Hunau covering an area of 21,700 

 square miles, which is nearly double our British coal area of 12,000 

 square miles. In the province of Shansi, the Baron discovered 

 nearly 30,000 square miles of coal, with unrivalled facilities for min- 

 ing. But all these vast coal-fields, capable of supplying the whole 

 world for some thousands of years to come, are lying unworked." 



If " the course of manufacturing supremacy of wealth and of 

 power" were directed by coal, then China, which possesses 33-3 times 

 more of this directive force than Great Britain, and had so early a 

 start in life, should be the supreme summit of the industrial world. 

 If this solid hydrocarbon " raises up one people and casts down an- 

 other," the Chinaman should be raised thirty-three times and three 

 tenths higher than the Englishman ; if it " makes railways on land 

 and paths on the sea," the Chinese railways should be 33-3 times 

 longer than ours, and the tonnage of their mercantile marine 33-3 

 times greater. 



Every addition to our knowledge of the mineral resources of other 

 parts of the world carries us nearer and nearer to the conclusion that 

 the old idea of the superlative abundance of the natural mineral 

 resources of England is a delusion. We are gradually discovering 

 that, with the one exception of tin-stone, we have but little if any 

 more than an average supply of useful ores and mineral fuel. It is a 

 curious fact, and one upon which we may profitably ponder, that the 

 poorest and the worst iron 'ores that have ever been commercially 

 reduced, are those of South Staffordshire and the Cleveland district, 

 and these are the two greatest iron-making centres of the world. 

 There are no ores of copper, zinc, tin, nickel, or silver in the neigh- 

 borhood of Birmingham, nor any golden sands upon the banks of the 

 Bea, yet this town is the hardware metropolis of the world, the 

 fatherland of gilding and plating, and is rapidly becoming supreme 

 in the highest art of gold and silver work. 



These, and a multitude of other analogous facts, abundantly refute 

 the idea that the native minerals, the natural fertility, tne navigable 

 rivers, or the convenient seaports, determine the industrial and com- 

 mercial supremacy of nations. The moral forces exerted by the indi- 

 vidual human molecules are the true components which determine 

 the resulting force and direction of national progress. It is the in- 

 dustry and skill of our workmen, the self-denial, the enterprise, and 

 organizing ability of our capitalists, that has brought our coal so 

 precociously to the surface and redirected for human advantage the 

 buried energies of ancient sunbeams, while the fossil fuel of other 

 lands has remained inert. 



The foreigner who would see a sample of the source of British 

 prosperity must not seek for it in a geological museum or among our 



