New-York tribune., 1866-05-04
commend or censure members with regard only to our
ENGLISH REsOURCEs-AnERIC Sup
PLIES.

"Beer is not staff of life says The London Ae''s'
Though it may occasionally serve, for want OF some
more generous opate, TO make tamlshed rustic leu
on fresh air. forget the sOrdid anguish OF his nome.
But TO make an Engshman's beer cheaper, or IN
other words TO remove the tax on malt, is, we sup
pose, always a favorte measure with the country
Tories when they find themselves opposed to making
an English workingmans life dearer by granting him
the franchise; just as our own Tories, who aim to
keep down millions of laboring people, are OF all
Others most anxious that whisky should at the same
time be cheap Mr.. Mill, in the House OF Commons,
has met this state of mind with conclusive pocket
argument of facts and figures, surmounted by high
y eloquent appeal in the name OF dutiiul concern
for postery to which Tory gentlemen are so gener-
ally obtuse 1t interests us especially to know how
the malt tax is mixed up not with the payment OF the
English debt alone but with the duration OF one oil
the most important of English resources
Two years of Crimean war added to the great debt
of England as much as had been economical from it in
80 years. md on this The Times remarks that in the
course of things another great war, at least as ex
pensive will occur within the century Between the
past and the future, how, then stands England Mr.
Mill quotes two facts Of signal advice and warning 10
English statesmen. Science points out, on the one
hand that the English nation greatly exceeds the
number of population that can be supported from It's
own soil; and the other, that the exhaustion Oh
coal supplies is longer question of centuries but
of generations" Mr.. Stanley Jeyons has written
work on "The Coal Question" which demonstrates
unanswerably to Mr. Mill that at the present rate ot
coal consumption, three generations at most VIII leave
no workable coal nearer than 1000 feet depth, and
that the expense of raising it from that depth VIII
entirely put it out of the power OF the couh-
try to compete in manufactures with tue
richer coal-feds OF other countries" A lew
figures narrow and define the dilemma. Sixty or
seventy years back the whole United Kingdom con-
sumed only about 5000 900 tuns annually; in 1864
the amount reached 93 900 COO and including OF
slack at the pits mouth it could not have been less than
100 600 OOO The drain has been so great that one
half the store is already gone and not much skill OF
arithmetic seems required to compute that III iVo
years at most the English mines will be past working
The most hopeful imagine that in view OF certain
precedents of supply, some new source OF warmth
light and heat will be invented; but this no economist
will consider himself wise to reckon.
What follows which concerns Englishmen or our
selves! If English revenue is to become extinct in
one of the most important resources, surely II would
be unwse to abolish another revenue whose loss would
make something Ike revolution in finance and more
than anything else mprudent for England to bequeah
to posterity an undimnished National debt without
certain assets Of resourcos II interests us especially
to infer that while coal grows dearer in England as its
supplies reach toward exhaustion, the overcrowd OF
English labor must tend where fuel is plenty, As
manufactures seek the coal mines so whatever loss
in this respect England sustans ought to be gam 10
the mines and iorges of America. We are in want OF
neither coal nor ron but Of that whereof England has
already too much-Labor