This system of protection, under several forms and pleasant variations, long continued, and was extended all over England, the pressure falling most unequally, to the injury of the least wealthy and the poor, according to the immemorial custom of Governments. Some of the people of London were audacious enough to complain that they did not need to be protected from the Newcastle coals, but all on the contrary, would give any fair sum to obtain them; and that, indeed, what they really needed was to be protected from the Lord Mayor and Corporation, and other taxes and duties. But these people were reproved as ignorant and froward, and told that they understood nothing at all:—what they had to do, was simply—to pay, first for the protection, and then for the coals. So they paid. But the importance of the article being found to exceed even the greediness of the impost, the use of coals became general during the reign of Charles the First; the same, with other taxes, being demanded, from the reign of William the Third downwards. In 1830, and not before, the heaviest of the above duties were abolished; those, however, which were collected from the Londoners being excepted—for their old impertinence—together with two or three sea-ports, who had also spoken. Who shall repress a truth? Coals were excellent good things—there was no reason in denying it. But any foolish people, and there will always be more than enough found to do it, _can_ repress a truth for an abominably long period, denying it without reason, yet very effectually. Or, when they admit it, then comes the tax and penalty to be paid for the fact. Thus was the free introduction and use of coals repressed throughout England until 1830; from which date, its grand rise from the bowels of the earth into a new and most extensive importance may be dated. Yet, as extremes meet, and as human nature delights in opposites, if only by way of reaction or relaxation, so the long-continued obstinate slowness of past ages bids fair, in our own day, to enter upon an extreme change to flighty prematurities, and the over-leaping of all intermediate and necessary knowledge. But the reign of the fast-ones is now approaching its height; which having once reached, it will then have a rapid decline into contempt, and so give place to regular and steady advances upon solid ground.