362 Limits of our Coal Supply. [July* 



therefore serve us as a warning for preparation. Britain 

 will be forced to retire from the coal-trade, and should 

 accordingly prepare her sons for higher branches of business, 

 — for those in which scientific knowledge and artistic train- 

 ing will replace mere muscular strength and mechanical 

 skill. We have attained our present material prosperity 

 mainly by our excellence in the use of steam power ; let us 

 ever struggle for supremacy in the practical application of 

 brain-power. 



We have time and opportunity for this. The exhaustion 

 of our coal supplies will go on at a continually retarding 

 pace — we shall always be approaching the end, but shall 

 never absolutely reach it, as every step of approximation 

 will diminish the rate of approach ; like the everlasting 

 process of reaching a given point by continually halving our 

 distance from it. 



First of all we shall cease to export coal, then we shall 

 throw up the most voracious of our coal-consuming in- 

 dustries, such as the reduction of iron ore in the blast- 

 furnace ; then copper smelting and the manufacture of 

 malleable iron and steel from the pig, and so on progres- 

 sively. If we keep in view the natural course and order 

 of such progress, and intelligently prepare for it, the loss 

 of our coal need not in the smallest degree retard the pro- 

 gress of our national prosperity. 



If, however, we act upon the belief that the advancement 

 of a nation depends upon the mere accidents of physical 

 advantages, if we fold our arms and wait for Providence to 

 supply us with a physical substitute for coal, we shall 

 become Chinamen, minus the unworked coal of China. 



If our educational efforts are conducted after the Chinese 

 model ; if we stultify the vigour and freshness of young 

 brains by the weary, dull, and useless cramming of words 

 and phrases ; if we poison and pervert the growing intellect of 

 British youth by feeding it upon the decayed carcases of dead 

 languages and on effete and musty literature, our progress 

 will be proportionally Chinaward ; but if we shake off that 

 monkish inheritance which leads so many of us blindly to 

 believe that the business of education is to produce scholars 

 rather than men, and direct our educational efforts towards 

 the requirements of the future rather than by the traditions 

 of the past, we need have no fear that Great Britain will 

 decline with the exhaustion of her coal fields. 



The teaching and training in schools and colleges must 

 be directly and designedly preparatory to those of the work- 

 shop, the warehouse, and the office ; for if our progress is 



