ch failure would
be likely to produce on the commercial prosperity of the country.

Great Britain has long been the centre of the universe in the supply of
the world's coal, and as a matter of fact, has been for many years
raising considerably more than one half of the total amount of coal
raised throughout the whole world. There is, as we have seen, an
abundance of coal elsewhere, which will, in the course of time, compete
with her when properly worked, but Britain seems to have early taken the
lead in the production of coal, and to have become the great universal
coal distributor. Those who have misgivings as to what will happen when
her coal is exhausted, receive little comfort from the fact that in North
America, in Prussia, in China and elsewhere, there are tremendous
supplies of coal as yet untouched, although a certain sense of relief is
experienced when that fact becomes generally known.

If by the time of exhaustion of the home mines Britain is still dependent
upon coal for fuel, which, in this age of electricity, scarcely seems
probable, her trade and commerce will feel with tremendous effect the
blow which her prestige will experience when the first vessel, laden with
foreign coal, weighs anchor in a British harbour. In the great coal
lock-out of 1893, when, for the greater part of sixteen weeks scarcely a
ton of coal reached the surface in some of her principal coal-fields, it
was rumoured, falsely as it appeared, that a collier from America had
indeed reached those shores, and the importance which attached to the
supposed event was shown by the anxious references to it in the public
press, where the truth or otherwise of the alarm was actively discussed.
Should such a thing at any time actually come to pass, it will indeed be
a retribution to those who have for years been squandering their
inheritance in many a wasteful manner of coal-consumption.

Thirty years ago, when so much small coal was wasted and wantonly
consumed in order to dispose of it in the easiest manner possible at the
pitmouths, and when only the best and largest coal was deemed to be of
any value, louder and louder did scientific men speak in protest against
this great and increasing prodigality. Wild estimates were set on foot
showing how that, sooner or later, there would be in Britain no native
supply of coal at all, and finally a Royal Commission was appointed in
1866, to collect evidence and report upon the probable time during which