viii COAL A NATIONAL TRUST 143 



rendered more or less permanently barren would, I believe, 

 astonish and affright us. How strikingly contrasted, both 

 in their motive and results, are those noble works of 

 planting or of irrigation which permanently increase both 

 the beauty and productiveness of a country, and carry 

 down their blessings to succeeding generations ! 



This brief sketch of some of the more salient features of 

 the subject of mineral export will serve to show how many 

 and various are the evil results which flow from allowing 

 these invaluable treasures to be wasted at the dictates of 

 mad speculation and the eager race for wealth. These 

 considerations have a very practical bearing at the present 

 time. The recent great rise in the price of coal has 

 brought up the question of the advisability of an export 

 duty upon it. The press, almost without exception, has 

 opposed this as being " contrary to the principles of free 

 trade ; " and it has further been argued that such a duty 

 would have little or no effect, because the real cause of the 

 high price of coal is that so much is used in the excessive 

 manufacture of iron. But it is evident, from the con- 

 siderations here set forth, that the export both of coal and 

 iron requires to be regulated or forbidden, and for the same 

 reasons ; and if the " principles of free trade " are opposed 

 to this, so much the worse for those " principles," since they 

 will be opposed not only to the true economy of human 

 progress, but also to the clearest principles of social and 

 national morality. Many persons will now ask whether 

 those can be true principles which lead to the exhaustion 

 of our coal-fields for the purpose of lighting South American 

 cities with gas or for building railways in every insolvent 

 South American Republic, while our own hard- working 

 population has to suffer the pangs of cold in winter, 

 in consequence of the high price of coal which such 

 reckless projects tend to cause. And the fact that all 

 parties concerned landowners, colliery proprietors, specu- 

 lators, and legislators are so far from seeing anything 

 wrong in what they are doing that their one aim at all 

 times is to secure a larger annual output, and an increased 

 export, will be to many an additional argument for taking 



