1870.] Mr. Bruce 1 s Mines Regulation Bill 213 



bodies, is a dead letter. Otherwise than under this Act, it makes no 

 provision whatever for the education of the mining population. 



Should Mr. Forster's Education Bill become law in its present 

 form, which leaves each district to judge whether parents shall or 

 shall not be compelled to send their children to school, then the 

 children in the mining districts of the North and of Cornwall will 

 probably learn the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic. We 

 wish we could expect as much with regard to Staffordshire. The 

 Kevised Code must, however, be re-revised before even the former 

 will, as a matter of course, have the opportunity of learning some- 

 thing of the laws of nature on which their safety depends. 



As to the persons responsible for the conduct of such hazard- 

 ous works, to require of them the rudiments not of a scientific 

 but of the most ordinary literary instruction would, according to 

 Mr. Bruce (perhaps rightly for some few years to come, and in 

 certain localities), disqualify unfairly, and without benefit to .the 

 commmiity, men who may be competent, though illiterate. We 

 hope that the example set by those West countrymen, who, in 

 addition to their hard day's labour underground, attend the science 

 classes of the -Miners' Association of Cornwall and Devon with 

 assiduity and success may, after a time, be followed elsewhere. 



The duty of " producing an amount of ventilation in collieries, 

 adequate to dilute and render harmless noxious gases to such an 

 extent that the working-places and roads shall be in a fit state for 

 working and passing," is enforced more peremptorily under the 

 bill than according to the existing law, inasmuch as the proof of 

 its fulfilment is, in the event of an accident, to rest with the owner, 

 instead of being taken for granted unless disproved. Strangely 

 enough both the masters and the miners object to this condition 

 as too stringent. Another provision which renders owners and 

 agents, like the men, liable to imprisonment for breach of rules is 

 more likely to pass, although the objection has been raised that it 

 might lead to the incarceration of the Secretary for the Colonies. 

 Why he should not be imprisoned, if he were to entrust the man- 

 agement of his mines to incompetent managers, does not appear 

 very clearly. We suspect that the locking up of Monsieur Flachat, 

 the Chief Engineer of the Chemin de l'Ouest, after a great railway 

 accident in France, has contributed in no slight degree to the safety 

 of railway passengers in that country. 



No change is to be made in the system of colliery inspection, 

 for two reasons : It is supposed, first, that to inspect every mine 

 carefully and at short intervals would require '200 competent 

 officials. This is an evident exaggeration, and one which it is 

 scarcely to be expected that "the present body of inspectors will 

 take much trouble to dissipate. At any rate, when it appears that 

 the number of mines of South Staffordshire and Worcestershire 



VOL. VII. Q 



