158 
is your powder ?” and being startled from his rest by the 
answer, ‘‘ You are sitting upon it.” 
The remedies for insensibility to their own preservation, 
and that of their fellows, must be chiefly of a moral nature, 
and must be very slow in their operation, requiring genera- 
tions to produce much effect. Mr. Tremenheere shows, in 
a passage too long to quote, how, without compulsion, a 
taste for some degree of mental cultivation may be induced, 
and some degree of intellectual advance imparted. We 
must make great allowance for the very low state of de- 
gradation, and the almost complete isolation from the rest 
of the community, in which, a century ago, colliers were 
sunk. In Scotland they were, by law, a kind of serfs. On 
the Tyne, at Kingswood, and in Staffordshire, they were 
wholly a distinct class — the amusement, the wonder, and 
the terror of their neighbourhoods. I have lived near 
coal mines for forty years; I believe it is neither fancy, 
nor use alone, but some degree of approach towards the 
habits and manners of other workmen, which renders it 
far less easy to me to distinguish at a glance a collier, 
whether man or boy, by his dress, gait, and features. 
However this may be, they are human beings ; and those 
masters and managers who, not only by liberal wages, 
but by kindness, and the evidence of their own concern 
for the men’s safety, attach these to them, will have a 
security for the observance of needful regulations, stronger 
and more constant than fines, or sudden and angry dismissal. 
I concur with most of the conclusions to which the 
different scientific reporters have come. I need not recap- 
itulate them at any length. More shafts ; separate and, so 
far as may be, distant shafts ; scaling fresh air to the 
furnace ; effectual ventilation of goafs, if possible ; increased 
use of lamps ; increased care and intelligence among the 
workmen, especially the firemen, wastemen, &c. The evils 
