Another of these contrivances is still in use near the Hay, in the parish of Madeley, called the Coalport Incline. This is 207 feet in length, and the gradient is much greater, being about one in three. So great indeed that on the chain snapping we have known a canal boat with five tons of iron pigs on board gain such velocity that on coming in contact with the water in the lower canal it has broken away from the iron chains which held it to the carriage, bounded into the air, clearing two other boats moored on the side, together with the embankment, and alighted in the Severn, close to the ferry-boat, into which it pitched some of the iron-pigs it contained. At the foot of this incline Mr. Reynolds drove a level to the shaft of the Blissers Hill pits, to bring down the coals to the lower canal for loading into barges on the Severn. This was the famous Tar Tunnel from which petroleum was formerly exported in large quantities to all parts of Europe. William Reynolds removed from Ketley to a large house formerly occupied by Lord Dundonald, at the Tuckies, where he continued to superintend the ironworks he had leased at Madeley Wood, familiarly known as Bedlam Furnaces, and was succeeded by his brother, Mr. Joseph Reynolds, who continued to carry on the Ketley Works till the recurrence of one of those fearful revulsions that have marked the history of the trade. For a quarter of a century we had been carrying on wars, levying troops, and interfering with everybody’s business but that which properly belonged to ourselves. We had obtained our object of ambition by bribery, strategy, and force of arms combined. We had restored the ancient families of France, reduced that country to its ancient limits, and annihilated its commerce. With glorious victory came fearful collapse, and the country awoke to find that a fallacy which it had been taught to regard as truth—that war brings commercial advantages that compensate for fearful waste and lavish expenditure. To add to the calamity, a succession of bad harvests was experienced, and the reduction of the army served to swell the poor’s-rates upon which working men and their families had been thrown for a bare support. Iron from £18 had gone down to £7 per ton, carriage paid from Ketley to Stourport. Mr. Reynolds believed the trade would never again rally, and resolved to blow out the furnaces at Ketley. This was in 1817. In 1818, at an immense sacrifice of property, consisting of the usual apparatus for making and manufacturing iron, he sold off at an immense loss, and removed to Bristol. Language cannot paint the deep distress which accompanied and followed this step. Men, with wives and families dependent upon them, saw their only ground of hope taken from them. Starving by thousands, and yoked like horses, they might be seen drawing materials for the repair of the roads, or conveying coal into Staffordshire. One third of the Shropshire banks failed.