There are few trades in which greater frauds are practised than in “the coal trade.” The dealers in the “black diamonds” are versed in all the _allowable_ legerdemain and trickery of “_auld_ England’s honest tradesmen:” the most skilfully initiated in the art of sleight-of-hand would find himself at fault in attempting to rival the dexterity of the true “son of the coalshed,” under the old régime of measuring, in ingeniously tossing his “spadefuls” into the measure so as to enable “the darlings” to lie lightly and “go far,” and assume the form of a solid cone, while the hollow cavity within proved as treacherous to any one treading on its “well raised summit,” as if he had put his foot on the surface of a quagmire. Nor was the well-fed, gaily clothed, richly lodged coal-merchant, with his “extensive concerns” to be easily “_out-done_” in well devised craft and contrivance: nicely pinched sacks, not foolishly flapping inwards so as to betray the precise amount of their contents,—well planned deliveries, either so early in the morning that the heads of the family might prefer the arms of Morpheus to the hazard of being choked with volumes of coal dust, or so late in the evening, that there might be a possibility of their being engaged in the “solid recreation” of their dinner, were a few of the demonstrations of generalship frequently exhibited by this portion of “the monied interest” and “great capitalists of the nation.” But to come to the point in hand. An honest writer on the subject, Mr. Eddington, in his Treatise on the Coal Trade, p. 94, informs us that the keeper of a coalshed felt himself dissatisfied with his measure, if in doling out his article to his poor, half-starved, shivering neighbours, in pecks, half pecks, or bushels, he could not measure out at the rate of forty-two bushels from every chaldron of thirty-six bushels; without taking into consideration the gain to be obtained from vending the inferior coal, and the consequent increase of quantity by throwing a few bushels of sifted ashes, pieces of stone, bones, or any other commodity which will assume a black form after having been well rummaged among the heap of coals.