The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-05 00:00:00

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popularly supposed to furnish the Tories of the
country. We do not think, then, that Mr. Bright
is a wise counsellor when he bids the working classes
resort to means which would excite such jealousies
and animosities. He chose to sneer at the opinion
we expressed yesterday that after the meetings of
the summer and the procession of Monday the Lon-
don working men might be content to keep quiet
till the meeting of Parliament. But we still venture
to believe that it is better advice, and more likely to
lead to a liberal and satisfactory settlement of the
Reform question, than any new enterprise for con -
solidating and extending to political matters the
tyranny of the Trades' Unions. As little can we
agree with Mr. Bright in his eulogy of the scheme
of a Franchise Bill without one for the Redistri-
bution of Seats. lie takes credit to himself for
having furnished the late Government with this idea ;
but there is, indeed, little reason for satisfaction,
for it was primarily to this unfortunate error, and
to the manner in which the Government persevered
in it until it had alienated the more moderate of its
supporters, that the disasters of the late session were
due. It is difficult to imagine Mr. Bright's purpose
in disinterring a plan which was so generally con-
demned, and telling us that it ought to form part of
the Liberal programme. Whatever passes, we will
venture to say that a franchise bill without a redis-
tribution of seats will not pass. Whatever views
may prevail in the House of Commons, the idea of a
Reform Bill spread over a series of years will never
be seriously entertained. No future statesman will
endanger office and reputation by a scheme the only
result of which must be to keep undecided one of
those questions which, as Mr. Bright says, have no
respect for the repose of nations. We hope for an
easier and speedier settlement. This year has been
one of trouble and confusion owing chiefly to the
unskilful conduct of affairs in Parliament by the late
Ministry. Whoever may be in power, it is not likely
that such errors will be repeated. We have no doubt
that a bill can be proposed which will content mode-
rate men of all classes, and that the two houses will
be willing to pass it.

The anthracite coal-fields of Pennsylvania are
comprised in 400 square miles of territory, and lie
within the counties of Schuylkill, Carbon, Luzerne,
and Wyoming, all adjoining each other among the
easternmost foot hills of the Alleghany mountains,
and in the valleys of the Lehigh, Schuylkill, and
upper Susquehanna rivers. They lie in three
masses, the lower or Schuylkill, the middle or
Lehigh, and the upper or Wyoming, and amount
to 640 square miles of land. All the glittering
black coals that make furnace fires all over New
England and New York, and get up steam for
shops and mills, come from this little section of
country, and can and could be found nowhere
else. Canals and railroads penetrate and thread
this region in all directions. Ten years ago there
were 758 miles of canals, and 1,030 miles of railway
open and in operation to and among the anthra-
cite coal-fields of Pennsylvania. Since then the
coal production has nearly doubled, and railway ac-
commodation must have grown in nearly as great
a degree.

Railways are fast superseding canals. The Lehigh
Navigation Company is substituting a railway for
its canal through the Lehigh valley—destroyed in
part by a freshet four years ago--and the great
Pennsylvanian Canal has not paid a dividend since
the Reading Railroad was opened.
The gross product of anthracite coal is about 10

millions of tons a year, nearly two millions of which
are consumed in the neighbourhood, the rest goes
to Philadelphia, adjacent tide water ports, and New
York. New York and New England are the chief

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These fields are in C--a------rbon and Schuylkill coun-
ties. Coal is wood and other vegetable matter
carbonised. Fire and squeezing are the main features
of the process. Peat is vegetable fibres getting
ready to be made into coal in nature's laboratory.
The familiar making of charcoal from wood is ano-
ther form or step of the process as man performs
it. Bituminous coal is a fuller development of car-
bonisation done by nature ; and man makes coke
from bituminous coal, as he does charcoal from
wood, by a slow, smouldering fire. The bitumen
or volatile elements are expelled, and coke is man's
anthracite coal. The latter, as nature, not man,
furnished it, is the highest stage of the transforma-
tion—the perfection of wood carbonised. The
diamond goes on many steps further, and is super-
refined, double-distilled, extra-polished, and over-
poweringly hardened carbon. Scientific people will
tell you how the diamond is made ; but they never
made it—anthracite coal is about as far as they ever
got.

Pennsylvania has almost the monopoly of anthra-
cite coal. There are bits of it in Wales and
Virginia, and faint streaks along the edges of bitu-
minous coal beds elsewhere, where the old fires sur-
vived the flood a little longer than in the rest of
the neighbourhood. Down in Rhode Island, too,
there are minesof anthracite coal, into which a good
deal of money has gone.