APPENDIX E : POLITICS, STATISTICS, ETC. 
211 
coal districts mainJy occupied for this purpose. With commerce so 
extensive that the sun, it is said, never sets upon the British flag, 
our fields and rivers traversed by Steam Engines, and every part of 
the Ocean spotted with them, we may ask, what is to be the supply 
of coal, and what may be the price of it to those who derive no benefit 
from such foreign intercourse ? The Iron trade, not of 100 years 
standing, has been said to consume as much coal as all the house-fires 
of that kind in the Island. The S. Wales, Staffordshire, the Derby, 
and Yorks., and the Scotch Coalfield, are the chief sites of the Iron 
trade, and the various and much increased uses of coal, begin to clash 
so much with each other, as may shortly expel the Iron-trade from some 
of these. The furnaces in Derby and Yorkshire districts, make but 
little Iron compared to their abundant supplies of Iron-stone, and that 
chiefly from the advanced price of coal. Staffordshire, also, with a 
very thick coal, but very limited in extent, has great demands for its 
coal in Birmingham, and other great Towns, and the country thence 
to the MetropoHs. The Shropshire coal by the Severn and Canals, 
and the Scotch by the great towns of Edinburgh, Leith, Paisley and 
Glasgow, and the manufactories ; so that, in all of these, it may be 
expected, coal will, at no very distant period, become too dear for making 
iron. 
It is already well ascertained where Iron can be made to the great- 
est advantage so that it is in vain to look for new establishments of 
that trade in any other or any of the lesser coalfields. There is plenty 
of Ironstone in that small coalfield about Mesham and Ashby-de-la- 
Zouch and in the Cumberland coalfield where Iron has been made. 
It was also made in Northumberland and in most of the coal districts 
Ironstone might be found but for the reasons before stated Iron cannot 
be made in these coal districts which have an extensive country supply, 
that of great Towns, extensive other Manufactories, and the Metropolis. 
Coal may be considered a kind of common property on which many 
have encroached so much as to render it almost necessary to allot each 
claimant their proper share or at least to put a tax upon so much of 
this our national property which is devoted to the purpose of manu- 
facturing transmarine products for a foreign market. 
Fortunately the iron trade nor any of the extensive manufactories 
were ever estabhshed in the Coal District of Durham which supplies 
the Metropolis and the only one it has to look to for a supply. The 
workings commenced in Northumberland on Newcastle moor not many 
