Genre:

Regular Feature, Proceedings, Drollery

Subjects:

Political Economy, Progress, Nationalism, Energy, Industry, Manufactories, Economic Geology, Scientific Practitioners, Government, Politics

    Presents an extract from a report of John S Mill's speech protesting against the removal of a productive tax, 'instead of applying its produce in diminution of the Debt which we leave to our children'. Mill also warned about the decreasing store of coal in Britain and the threat this posed to the country's currently unsurpassed manufacturing output, and argued in favour of leaving enough coal for Britain's economic posterity. His defence of the need to consider the posterity of the country includes the claim that Britain's rich treasures of heroic and virtuous deeds had been 'amassed for us only because our ancestors have cared and taken thought for posterity. We owe it to our great masters of thought —our Bacon, and Newton, and Locke' and others. (174)