Account of the Numbers of four-wheeled and other Carriages (exclusive of Hackney Coaches) charged with Duties in 1812, 1825, 1830, and 1840, the Rates of Duty, and the Produce of the Duties.

657

14 0 0

9,198 0 0

4,851 0 0

The clauses in the act 2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 120. relating to the distribution of outside passengers, &c. have been repealed by the act 3 & 4 Will. 4 c. 48., which substitutes the following in their stead.

Number of outside Passengers, &c. - Any licensed stage carriage with 4 wheels or more, the top or roof of which shall not be more than 3 feet 9 inches from the ground, and the bearing of which on the ground shall not be less than 4 feet 6 inches from the centre of the tracks of the wheels, if such carriage shall be licensed to carry any number not more than 9 passengers, shall be allowed to carry not more than 5 of such passengers outside; and if licensed to carry more than 9 and not more than 12 passengers, shall be allowed to carry not more than 8 of such passengers outside; and if licensed to carry more than 12 and not more than 15 passengers, shall be allowed to carry not more than 11 of such passengers outside; and if licensed to carry more than 15 and not more than 18 passengers, shall be allowed to carry not more than 12 of such passengers outside; and if licensed to carry any greater number than 18 passengers, shall be allowed to carry not more than 2 additional passengers outside for every 3 additional passengers which such carriage shall be so licensed to carry in the whole; provided that in no case a greater number of passengers shall be carried on the outside than is authorised by the licence. If more be carried, driver to forfeit 54. § 2.

Driver, Guard, and Children in lap, not to be counted as passengers; 2 children under 7 years reckoned as 1 passenger. 3.

No Person to sit on Luggage on the Roof, nor more than 1 person besides driver on the box. Penalty 5.-14.

Justices, Road-surveyors, Toll-keepers, &c. authorised to cause stage carriages and luggage to be measured; any passenger authorised to require the driver to stop at a toll gate, and to require the gatekeeper to measure the carriage and luggage, and to count the number of inside and outside passengers. Penalty on driver refusing to stop, 51.; on gate-keeper neglecting to provide a measure, or refusing to measure and count, 5.-(2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 120. ◊ 45.)

Conduct of Drivers, &c. - Drivers quitting the box before a proper person shall stand at the head of the horses; such person leaving the horses before some other person shall be placed in like manner, or have the command of the horses, or before the driver has resumed his seat on the box and taken the reins; driver allowing any passenger or other person to drive for him, or leaving the box without any reasonable occasion, or for a longer time than is absolutely necessary; concealing or misplacing plates; guard discharging fire-arms unnecessarily; driver, conductor, or guard neglecting to take care of luggage; asking more than the proper fare; neglecting to account to his employer; or assaulting or using abusive language to any person having travelled, or about to travel, as a passenger, or to any person accompanying the same: shall in each and every such case forfeit 5.47.

Drunkenness, &c. - Drivers, conductors, or guards having the care of any stage carriage, endangering, through intoxication, negligence, or wanton and furious driving, the safety of any passenger or other person, or the property of the owner of such carriage or other person, shall each person so offending forfeit 51.49.

Owners liable for penalties, when driver or guard is not known or cannot be found.-49.

Railway Proprietors are to render accounts of the passengers conveyed along the same to the Stamp Office, and to give security to keep and render such accounts, and to pay the duties. ◊ ◊ 50, 51.

Treasury may compound with proprietors of railways for the duties chargeable on passengers conveyed by them. 52.

MAIL COACHES are under the regulations of the postmaster general; and the enactments in this act as to plates, inscriptions, outside passengers, and luggage, do not extend to them; but the other regulations as to the conduct of drivers, guards, &c. do pply to them. Mail coaches have only four outside passengers; one on the box, and three immediately behind the box. No passenger allowed to sit beside the guard. The rate of travelling, the time allowed for stoppages, the quantity of luggage to be carried, &c. are all regulated by the postmaster general. Rates of Duty on Carriages. On those having

For an account of HACKNEY COACHES, see the term. COAL (Du. Steenkoolen; Fr. Charbon de terre; Ger. Steinkohlen; It. Carboni fossili; Lat. Lithanthrax; Port. Carvoes de terra, ou de pedra; Rus. Ugolj, Kamennoe; Sp. Carbones de tierra, Carbones de piedra; Sw. Stenkol). This highly important combustible mineral is divided by mineralogists into the three great families of black coal, uninflammable coal, and brown coal; each of these being again divided into many subordinate species.

All the common coals, as slate coal, foliated coal, cannel coal, &c., belong to the black coal family. Slate and foliated coal is found in vast quantities in Durham and Northumberland, at Whitehaven in Cumberland, in the river district of the Forth and Clyde, in South Wales, &c. The best Newcastle coal kindles easily; in burning it cakes or runs together into a solid mass, emitting a great deal of heat, as well as of smoke and flame ; it leaves a small quantity of heavy, dark-coloured residuum or ashes. Most of the Scotch coals are what are familiarly called open burning coals. They do not last so long as the Newcastle coal, yield less heat, do not cake or run together in burning, and usually leave a considerable quantity of light, white ashes. They make, however, a very pleasant, cheerful fire; and, for most household purposes, the best fire is said to be made of a mixture of Scotch and Newcastle coal.

Cannel coal is sometimes met with in the Newcastle pits, in Ayrshire, largest beds of it, and of the purest kind, are near Wigan in Lancashire. a beautiful clear flame, emitting a great deal of light, but not much heat. good polish; and articles made of it are often passed off for pure jet.

&c.; but the It burns with

It takes a

The uninflammable coals are those known by the names of Welsh culm or stone coal, Kilkenny coal, and the blind or deaf coal of Scotland. These coals are difficult to kindle, which has given rise to their name; but when once thoroughly ignited, they burn for a long time: they make a hot, glowing fire, like charcoal, without either flame or smoke; but owing to their emitting noxious vapours, they cannot be used in dwelling houses, though they are in considerable demand among maltsters, dyers, &c.

Brown, or Bovey coal, so called from its being principally found at Bovey near Exeter, is light, yields but little heat in burning, and is seldom used as fuel.

In all, about seventy species of coal are said to be imported into London, of which forty-five are sent from Newcastle! Of course, many of them differ from each other by almost imperceptible degrees, and can only be distinguished by those thoroughly conversant with the trade.

Origin of Coal. Phenomena of Combustion, &c. Coal beds, or strata, lie among those of gravel, sand, chalk, clay, &c., which form great part of the present surface of the earth, and have been evidently accumulated during remote ages by the agency of "moving water," '-similar to accumulations now in process of formation at the mouths of all great rivers, and in the bottoms of lakes, and seas. When these strata had, by long contact and pressure, been solidified into a rocky crust to the earth, this crust, by subsequent convulsions of nature, of which innumerable other proofs remain, has been in various parts broken and heaved up above the level of the sea, so as to form the greater part of our dry or habitable land; in some places appearing as lofty mountains, in others as extended plains. In many situations, the fracture of the crust exhibits the edges of the various distinct strata found in a given thickness of it. When the fracture has the form of a precipitous cliff, these edges appear one above another, like the edges of piled planks or books; but often also they are met with in horizontal succession along a plain, as the edges of a pile of books laid down upon a table; or they may be seen surrounding hills of granite, which protrude through them. Coal, and other precious minerals, were first discovered at the fractures of the strata above described, and by the continued digging of the strata or veins the vast excavations called mines have been gradually formed. When it was at last discovered that the mineral strata occur every where in nearly the same order or succession, so that the exposure of a portion of one stratum is a good indication of the other strata being near, the operations of the miner became of much surer result, and expensive boring through superior strata might be prudently undertaken, even where no specimen of the desired but more deeply buried substance had yet been seen.

Before the discovery of coal mines, or the invention of cheap means of working them, wood was generally used as fuel; and in many countries where the arts have not much flourished, it continues to be principally employed as such. Coal, however, for many purposes, answers much better than wood; and, in fact, the two, although in appearance so different, are in their ultimate composition very nearly allied. They both have for their basis or chief ingredient the substance called by the chemists carbon, and for their chief other ingredient, the substance called hydrogen, which, when separated, exists in the form of air or gas. The hydrogen is easily driven away or volatilised from either coal or wood, by heating in a close place; and when it is caught and preserved, it forms the gas now used to light our streets and public buildings. What remains of coal, after being so treated, is the substance called coke; and what remains of wood, similarly treated, is the substance called charcoal, · both being nearly pure carbon, but differing as to the states of compactness. This kindred nature of coal and wood does not surprise, when the fact is known, that much of our coal is really transformed wood; many coal mines being evidently the remains of antediluvian forests, swept together in the course of the terrestrial changes already alluded to, and afterwards solidified to the state now In these mines, the species of the plants or trees which formed them are still quite evident in abundant specimens, mixed often with the remnants of the animals which inhabited the earth at the same time. The extensive peat-mosses now existing on the surface of the earth, consist chiefly of vegetable remains in an early stage of the kind of change which terminates in the formation of coal.

seen.

A substance which, like coal or wood, cheaply answers the purpose of producing great heat and light, is called fuel, and the phenomenon of that production is called combustion. Now, modern discovery has ascertained that, in every instance, combustion is merely an appearance which accompanies the mutual action, when very intense, of two substances in the act of forming an intimate or chemical union. Where that act is less energetic, the heat produced is less intense, and there is no light. Thus, water and sulphuric acid when mixing produce great heat, but no light. Water and quicklime produce still greater heat; sufficient, it is known, to set fire to a ship in which the mixture unfortunately occurs. It is an occurrence of the same kind when heat is evolved from an acid dissolving a metal; and it is still of the same kind when a mass of coal or wood in a

fire-grate is, with the appearance of combustion, undergoing solution in the oxygen of the atmosphere. In this last case, however, the temperature of the fuel is, by the very intense action, raised so much that the fuel becomes incandescent or luminous; an appearance assumed by every substance, whether burning or not. — of a stone, for instance, or piece of metal, — when heated beyond the temperature indicated by 800° of Fahrenheit's thermometer. The inferior degrees of such incandescence are called red heat; the superior degrees, white heat. The reason why any strongly heated body throws out light, we cannot yet explain. When a quantity of wood or coal has been burned to ash in a confined portion of air, the whole of the fuel, vanished from view, is held in solution by the air, as salt is held in water, and is again recoverable by the art of the chemist. The phenomenon of common fire, or combustion, then, is merely the fuel being chemically dissolved in the air of the atmosphere. If the fuel has nothing volatile in it, as is true of pure carbon, and nearly true of coke and charcoal, it burns with the appearance of red-hot stones; but if there be an ingredient, as hydrogen, which, on being heated, readily assumes the form of air, that ingredient dilates before burning, and in the act produces the more bulky incandescence called flame.

The two great purposes which combustion serves to man, are, to give light and heat. By the former he may be said to lengthen considerably the duration of his natural existence; for he converts the dismal and almost useless night into what, for many ends, serves him as well as day; and by the latter, besides converting winter into any climate which he desires, he is enabled to effect most important mutations in many of the substances which nature offers for his use; and, since the invention of the steam engine, he makes heat perform a great proportion of the work of society. From these considerations may be perceived the importance of having fire at command; and, as the cheapest means of commanding fire, of having abundance of coal.

As respects the supply of coal, Britain is singularly favoured; a large portion of the surface of the country having under it continuous and thick beds of this valuable mineral, - vastly more precious to us than would have been mines of the precious metals, like those of Peru and Mexico; for coal, since it has been applied to the steam-engine, is really hoarded power, applicable to almost every purpose which human labour directed by ingenuity can accomplish. It is the possession of her coal mines which has rendered Britain, in relation to the whole world, what a city is to the rural district which surrounds it, the producer and dispenser of the various products of art and industry. Calling her coal mines the coal cellars of the great city, there is in them a supply, which, at the present rate of expenditure, will last for 2,000 years at least; and, therefore, a provision which, as coming improvements in the arts of life will naturally effect economy of fuel, or substitution of other means to effect similar purposes, may be regarded as inexhaustible.

The kinds or differences of coal depend on their comparative proportions of carbon and hydrogen, and of earthy impurities totally incombustible. While some species of coal contain nearly a third of their weight of hydrogen, others have not a fiftieth part. The former kinds are flaming coal, pleasing in parlour fires, and fit for the manufacture of gas. The other kinds-some of the Welch stone coal, for instance-will only burn when in large heaps, or when mixed with more inflammable coal: they have no flame. When flaming coal is burned where a sufficiency of oxygen cannot pass through or enter above the fire, to combine with and consume the hydrogen as fast as it rises, a dense smoke is given out, consisting of hydrogen and carbon combined in the proportions which form a pitchy substance. The Welch coal above mentioned can as little give out smoke as flame, and hence is now much used in great breweries, and in the steam-engine furnaces of towns, where smoke is a serious nuisance. The foliated or cubical coal, and slate coal, are chiefly used as fuel in private houses; the caking coals, for smithy forges; the slate coal, from its keeping open, answers best for giving great heats in a wind furnace, as in distillation on a large scale; and glance coal, found in Staffordshire, is used for drying grain and malt. The coals of South Wales contain less volatile matter than either the English or the Scotch; and hence, when employed in smelting the ore, produce a greater quantity of iron. It is supposed that 3 parts of good Newcastle coal are equivalent, as fuel, to 4 parts of good Scotch coal.

Consumption of Coal. Number of Persons engaged in the Trade. Supply of Coal. The great repositories of coal in this kingdom are in Northumberland and Durham, whence London and most parts of the south of England are at present supplied; in Cumberland, whence large quantities of coal are exported to Ireland; and in Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, South Wales, &c. In Scotland, coal is found in the Lothians, Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Ayrshire, and other counties. In Ireland, coal is both deficient in quantity and inferior in quality to that of Great Britain; and turf forms the great article of fuel.

It is not easy to form any very accurate estimate of the annual consumption of coal in Great Britain; probably, however, the following may not be far from the mark.

Domestic consumption in 1845 and smaller manufactures

Production of pig and bar iron

Copper smelting, brass manufactures, &c.

Tons. 18.000.000

9,000,000

1,000,000

800,000

800,000

490,000

640,000

1,200,000

31.800.000

1,000,000

1,800,000

34,500,000

Mr. Buddle, of Wallsend, an extremely well informed coal engineer, gave, in 1829, the following estimate of the number of persons engaged in the different departments of the coal trade on the Tyne and Wear, in the conveyance of coal to London, and in the London coal trade :

"I hold a paper in my hand stating the number of people employed in the coal trade in each department. I would beg to observe, the returns from the Tyne are official documents; from the Wear I have no returns, but it is by an approximate calculation. The number of persons employed under-ground on the Tyne are,-men, 4,937; boys, 3,554; together 8,491: above ground, men, 2,745; boys, 718; making 3,463: making the total employed in the mines above and below ground, 11,954, which in round numbers I call 12,000, because I am pretty sure there were some omissions in the returns. On the river Wear, I conceive there are 9,000 employed; making 21,000 employed in digging the coal, and delivering it to the ships on the two rivers. From the best calculations I have been able to make, it would appear that, averaging the coasting vessels that carry coals at the size of 220 London chaldrons each vessel, there would be 1,400 vessels employed, which would require 15,000 seamen and boys. I have made a summary. There are, seamen, 15,000; pitmen and above-ground people employed at the collieries, 21,000; keel-men, coal-boatmen, casters, and trimmers, 2,000 making the total number employed in what I call the Northern Coal Trade, 38,000. In London, whippers, lightermen, and so forth, 5,000; factors, agents, &c. on the Coal Exchange, 2,500; -7,500 in all, in London. Making the grand total in the North country and London departments of the trade, 45,500. This does not, of course, include the persons employed at the outports in discharging the ships there." It is necessary, however, to bear in mind that these statements apply only to 1830, and that there must have been a material increase in the interval.

"The

In another place, Mr. Buddle states, that "colliers are always paid by the piece," and consequently their wages, although at the same rate per chaldron, vary according to the quantity of work they have to do; and it is difficult to form an average, they vary so very considerably: they have varied from 14s. a week, to, in some instances, 40s. colliers can earn up to 5s. or even more per day; but there is not full employment for them; they sometimes do not earn more than half that sum; 2s. 6d. is the certain wages that they are hired to receive from their employers, whether they are employea or not; that is, consequently, a tax on the coal owner, during the suspension of his colliery from any accident. The men have the option of finding work elsewhere; but if they cannot do this, they may call upon their master to pay them 14s. per week; it was 15s. a week till 1828."

We regret that we are unable to lay any estimates before our readers of the number of persons employed in the other branches of the coal trade; but taking into view the proportion which the trade on the Tyne and the Wear bears to the trade of Great Britain, and the increase since 1830, we are inclined to think that the total number of persons directly engaged in the coal trade may be set down at from 190,000 to 220,000.

The importance of coal as a necessary of life, and the degree in which our superiority in arts and manufactures depends upon our obtaining supplies of it at a cheap rate, has naturally attracted a good deal of attention to the question as to the period when the exhaustion of the coal mines may be anticipated. But the investigations hitherto made as to the magnitude and thickness of the different coal-beds, and the extent to which they may be wrought, are too vague and unsatisfactory to afford grounds for forming any thing like a tolerably near approximation to a solution of this question. But such as they are, they are sufficient to show that many centuries must elapse before posterity can feel any serious difficulties from a diminished supply of coal. According to an estimate prepared by Mr. Taylor, an intelligent coal engineer, in 1829, the coal-fields of Durham and Northumberland are adequate to furnish the present annual supply for a very long period. We subjoin Mr. Taylor's estimate.