344 Limits of our Coal Supply. [July, 



diligently visits these cottages, and freely admonishes where 

 he deems it necessary ; yet he sees in this general waste of 

 coal no corresponding sinfulness to that of wasting bread. 

 Why is he so blind in one direction, while his moral vision 

 is so microscopic in the other? Why are nearly all English- 

 men and Englishwomen as inconsistent as the vicar in this 

 respect ? 



There are doubtless several combining reasons for this, 

 but I suspect that the principal one is the profound impres- 

 sion that we have inherited from the experience and tradi- 

 tions of the horrors of bread-famine. A score of proverbs 

 express the important practical truth that we rarely appre- 

 ciate any of our customary blessings until we have tasted 

 the misery of losing them. Englishmen have tasted the 

 consequences of approximate exhaustion of the national 

 grain store, but have never been near to the exhaustion of 

 the national supply of coal. 



I therefore maintain most seriously that we need a severe 

 coal famine, and if all the colliers of the United Kingdom 

 were to combine for a simultaneous winter strike of about 

 three or six months' duration, they might justly be regarded 

 as unconscious patriotic martyrs, like soldiers slain upon a 

 battle-field. The evils of such a thorough famine would be 

 very sharp, and proportionally beneficent, but only tem- 

 porary ; there would not be time enough for manufacturing 

 rivals to sink pits, and at once erect competing iron-works ; 

 but the whole world would partake of our calamity, and the 

 attention of all mankind would be aroused to the sinfulness 

 of wasting coal. Six months of compulsory wood and peat 

 fuel, with total stoppage of iron supplies, would convince 

 the people of these islands that waste of coal is even more 

 sinful than waste of bread, — would lead us to reflect on the 

 fact that our stock of coal is a definite and limited quantity 

 that was placed in its present store-house long before 

 human beings came upon the earth ; that every ton of coal 

 that is wasted is lost for ever, and cannot be replaced by 

 any human effort, while bread is a product of human in- 

 dustry, and its waste may be replaced by additional human 

 labour; that the sin of bread-wasting does admit of agri- 

 cultural atonement, while there is no form of practical 

 repentance that can positively and directly replace a hundred- 

 weight of wasted coal. 



Nothing short of the practical and impressive lesson of 

 bitter want is likely to drive from our households that 

 wretched fetish of British adoration, the open " English- 

 man's fireside." Reason seems powerless against the 



