Whether a coal mine, for example, can afford
any rent, depends partly upon its fertility,
and partly upon its situation.
A mine of any kind may be said to be either
fertile or barren, according as the quantity of
mineral which can be brought from it by a
certain quantity of labour, as greater or less
than what can be brought by an equal quantity
from the greater part of other mines of
the same kind.
Some coal mines, advantageously situated,
cannot be wrought on account of their barrenness.
The produce does not pay the expense.
They can afford neither profit nor rent.
There are some, of which the produce is
barely sufficient to pay the labour, and
replace, together with its ordinary profits, the
stock employed in working them. They afford
some profit to the undertaker of the work,
but no rent to the landlord. They can be
wrought advantageously by nobody but the
landlord, who, being himself the undertaker
of the work, gets the ordinary profit of the
capital which he employs in it. Many coal
mines in Scotland are wrought in this manner,
and can be wrought in no other. The landlord
will allow nobody else to work them without
paying some rent, and nobody can afford
to pay any.
Other coal mines in the same country, sufficiently
fertile, cannot be wrought on account
of their situation. A quantity of mineral,
sufficient to defray the expense of working,
could be brought from the mine by the ordinary,
or even less than the ordinary quantity
of labour: but in an inland country, thinly
inhabited, and without either good roads or
water-carriage, this quantity could not be sold.
Coals are a less agreeable fuel than wood:
they are said too to be less wholesome. The
expense of coals, therefore, at the place where
they are consumed, must generally be somewhat
less than that of wood.
The price of wood, again, varies with the
state of agriculture, nearly in the same manner,
and exactly for the same reason, as the
price of cattle. In its rude beginnings, the
greater part of every country is covered with
wood, which is then a mere incumbrance, of
no value to the landlord, who would gladly
give it to any body for the cutting. As agriculture
advances, the woods are partly cleared
by the progress of tillage, and partly go to decay
in consequence of the increased number
of cattle. These, though they do not increase
in the same proportion as corn, which is altogether
the acquisition of human industry, yet
multiply under the care and protection of men,
who store up in the season of plenty what
may maintain them in that of scarcity; who,
through the whole year, furnish them with a
greater quantity of food than uncultivated nature
provides for them; and who, by destroying
and extirpating their enemies, secure them
in the free enjoyment of all that she provides.
Numerous herds of cattle, when allowed to
wander through the woods, though they do
not destroy the old trees, hinder any young
ones from coming up; so that, in the course
of a century or two, the whole forest goes to
ruin. The scarcity of wood then raises its
price. It affords a good rent; and the landlord
sometimes finds that he can scarce employ
his best lands more advantageously than
in growing barren timber, of which the greatness
of the profit often compensates the lateness
of the returns. This seems, in the present
times, to be nearly the state of things in
several parts of Great Britain, where the profit
of planting is found to be equal to that of
either corn or pasture. The advantage which
the landlord derives from planting can nowhere
exceed, at least for any considerable
time, the rent which these could afford him;
and in an inland country, which is highly cultivated,
it will frequently not fall much short
of this rent. Upon the sea-coast of a well-improved
country, indeed, if coals can conveniently
be had for fuel, it may sometimes be
cheaper to bring barren timber for building
from less cultivated foreign countries than to
raise it at home. In the new town of Edinburgh,
built within these few years, there is
not, perhaps, a single stick of Scotch timber.
Whatever may be the price of wood, if that
of coals is such that the expense of a coal fire
is nearly equal to that of a wood one, we may
be assured, that at that place, and in these
circumstances, the price of coals is as high as
it can be. It seems to be so in some of the
inland parts of England, particularly in Oxfordshire,
where it is usual, even in the fires
of the common people, to mix coals and wood
together, and where the difference in the
expense of those two sorts of fuel cannot, therefore,
be very great. Coals, in the coal countries,
are everywhere much below this highest
price. If they were not, they could not bear
the expense of a distant carriage, either by
land or by water. A small quantity only could
be sold; and the coal masters and the coal
proprietors find it more for their interest to
sell a great quantity at a price somewhat above
the lowest, than a small quantity at the highest.
The most fertile coal mine, too, regulates
the price of coals at all the other mines
in its neighbourhood. Both the proprietor
and the undertaker of the work find, the one
that he can get a greater rent, the other that
he can get a greater profit, by somewhat underselling
all their neighbours. Their neighbours
are soon obliged to sell at the same
price, though they cannot so well afford it,
and though it always diminishes, and sometimes
takes away altogether, both their rent
and their profit. Some works are abandoned
altogether; others can afford no rent, and can
be wrought only by the proprietor.
The lowest price at which coals can be sold
for any considerable time, is, like that of all