128 DUDLEY.

and New South Wales - no doubt Nature has in store for us an equivalent for the loss of coal (for nobody presumes that mineral can last for ever), just as coal was a substitute for our exhausted woods and forests some two centuries ago; besides which we need not fear that long before our coal fields may be worked out the inventive genius of man will have discovered some cheaper, more effective, and less objectionable illuminating agent than coal-gas, whereby a large proportion of the consumption of coal will be saved. And we know not yet what may be done by the aid of petroleum. Of course our coal store is not unlimited, and should be economised ; and a great point will be gained towards this end when the use of mineral oils for steam-generating purposes is rendered practicable, which seems not unlikely. We may, however, have to deal with another difficulty nearer our own times: an increase in the price of coal, arising from the prospect of its presumed scarcity at some time or other, may operate seriously on the iron trade, and drive much of it to other countries; at least, our export trade would be to a great extent lost, and we might even have to import iron largely for our own use. This would indeed be a heavy blow to the manufacturing preeminence of our country; but is not this result already being worked out by another process 1 The combination to force up wages in the ironworks is even now telling very much against the prosperity of this country; by keeping np the price of iron made here, and admitting the importation of Belgian iron in large quantities, so that an extra impetus js given to the foreign trade at the expense of our own. With regard to Dudley and the South Staffordshire district, we all know that it is the contiguity of coal, iron, and limestone to each other in this neighbourhood which imparts so great a value, and affords such facilities for working them all; yet the wages question and othefeircurastances are now seriously threatening the prosperity of each of these interests. The coal trade of the district is being much interfered with by the large importations of coal from Wales and the North of England, where,