COALVILLE AND SNIBSTON COLLIERY.
TAPTON HOUSE. [By Percival Skelton.]
[CHAPTER XVI.]
GEORGE STEPHENSON'S COAL-MINES—APPEARS AT MECHANICS' INSTITUTES—HIS OPINION ON RAILWAY SPEEDS—ATMOSPHERIC SYSTEM—RAILWAY MANIA—VISITS TO BELGIUM AND SPAIN.
While George Stephenson was engaged in carrying on the works of the Midland Railway in the neighborhood of Chesterfield, several seams of coal were cut through in the Claycross Tunnel, when it occurred to him that if mines were opened out there, the railway would provide the means of a ready sale for the article in the midland counties, and even as far south as the metropolis itself.
At a time when every body else was skeptical as to the possibility of coals being carried from the midland counties to London, and sold there at a price to compete with those which were sea-borne, he declared his firm conviction that the time was fast approaching when the London market would be regularly supplied with North-country coals led by railway. One of the great advantages of railways, in his opinion, was that they would bring iron and coal, the staple products of the country, to the doors of all England. "The strength of Britain," he would say, "lies in her iron and coal beds, and the locomotive is destined, above all other agencies, to bring it forth. The lord chancellor now sits upon a bag of wool; but wool has long since ceased to be emblematical of the staple commodity of England. He ought rather to sit upon a bag of coals, though it might not prove quite so comfortable a seat. Then think of the lord chancellor being addressed as the noble and learned lord on the coal-sack! I am afraid it wouldn't answer, after all."