EXHAUSTION OF COAL IN ENGLAND. 



125 



the working.* According to Mr. Winch, three million five hundred 

 thousand tons of coal are consumed annually from these districts ; to 

 which if we add the waste of small coal at the pit's mouth, and the 

 waste in the mines, it will make the total yearly destruction of coal, 

 nearly double the quantity assigned by Dr. Thomson. Dr. Thomson 

 has also greatly overrated the quantity of the coal in these districts, 

 as he has calculated the extent of the principal beds from that of the 

 lowest, which is erroneous ; for many of the principal beds crop out, 

 before they reach the western termination of the coal-fields. With 

 due allowance for these errors, and for the quantity of coal already 

 worked out, (which, according to Mr. Bailey, is about one third,) the 

 1000 years of Dr. Thomson will not greatly exceed the period assign- 

 ed by Mr. Bailey for the complete exhaustion of coal in these coun- 

 ties, and may be stated at 350 years. 



It cannot be deemed uninteresting to enquire, what are the reposi- 

 tories of coal that can supply the metropolis and the southern coun- 

 ties, when no more can be obtained from the Tyne and the Wear. 

 The only coal-fields of any extent on the eastern side of England, 

 between London and Durham, are those of Derbyshire, and those in 

 the West Riding of Yorkshire. The Derbyshire coal-field is not of 

 sufficient magnitude to supply, for any long period, more than is re- 

 quired for home consumption, and that of the adjacent counties. 

 There are many valuable beds of coal in the western part of the West 

 Riding of Yorkshire which are yet unwrought; but the time is not 

 very distant when they must be put in requisition, to supply the vast 

 demand of that populous manufacturing county, which at present 

 consumes nearly all the produce of its own coal mines. In the mid- 

 land counties, Staffordshire possesses the nearest coal district to the 

 metropolis, of any great extent; but such is the immense daily con- 

 sumption of coal in the iron furnaces and founderies, that it is gener- 

 ally believed, this will be the first of our own coal-fields that will be 

 exhausted. The thirty-feet bed of coal in Dudley coal-field is of lim- 

 ited extent; and in the present mode of working it, more than two 

 thirds of the coal is wasted and left in the mine. 



If we look to Whitehaven or Lancashire, or to any of the minor 

 coal-fields in the west of England, we can derive little hope of their 

 being able to supply London and the southern counties with coal, af- 

 ter the import of coal fails from Northumberland and Durham. We 

 may thus anticipate a period not very remote, when all the English 

 mines of coal and ironstone will be exhausted : and were we disposed 

 to indulge in gloomy forebodings, like the ingenious authoress of the 

 "Last Man," we might draw a melancholy picture of our starving 

 and declining population, and describe some manufacturing patriarch. 



* The waste of coal at the pit's mouth may be stated at one sixth of the quantity 

 sold, and that in the mines at one third. Mr. Holmes, in his Treatise on Coal 

 Mines, states the waste of small coal at the pit's mouth to be one fourth of the 

 whole. 



