ANNITEESAEY ADDRESS. 19 



collieries at home ; but if I mistake not, we even here are at this 

 time suffering from similar causes as to advanced prices of coal, 

 occasioned by strikes. But this is not the question we have now 

 to consider. Our manufactories here are on the increase, and the 

 present rate of consumption of coal in this Colony is also wonder- 

 fully increased. 



A few weeks ago I had the opportunity of witnessing a state 

 of great activity in the city of JS'ewcastle, and also a proportionate 

 activity in the Illawarra district. There is also a kind of coal- 

 fever breeding among speculators, which may, unless well looked 

 after, give as much trouble to many as the late gold, copper, and 

 tin eruptions have occasioned. 



It is quite true, however, that these mineral epidemics cannot 

 really affect the amount of underground wealth that the Provi- 

 dence of Grod has placed beneath our feet. But what that amount 

 may be is another question. 



At present our idea of the extent and thickness of coal in this 

 Colony is not founded altogether on positive proof so much as on 

 scientific deductions. JN^evertheless, it may be satisfactory to be 

 assured that so far as such deductions go, when founded on the 

 best data we have (and for the present we can have no others), 

 the probability is great that there is an abundant supply for a 

 long period of time. 



I am fond of believing in a Providential ruler of man's destiny, 

 and it appears to me hardly philosophical to suppose that the 

 nation to which we belong, whose tendencies and ingenuities are 

 somehow connected with what coal has done and is doing for it, 

 should be permitted to send off large offshoots of its population 

 into distant regions without everything being already prepared 

 to render them capable of following the instincts of their brethren 

 at home. 



This may be fanciful, but the fact is that all the great coloniza- 

 tions by the Anglo-Saxon race have settled where there are the 

 natural supplies which its genius does or will require. 



