Still, we are not to infer from the present flourishing state of things, that the great black-diamond millionaires are very numerous, or that fortunes are readily accumulated in the trade. Coal mines are hazardous speculations: costly is the sinking of shafts—precarious the lives of men and property from constant dangers of explosion or inundation; whereof it comes that no Insurance Office will guarantee such property against these or any other accidents. True may it be that the large coal owners on the Tyne and the Wear rejoice in a sort of monopoly; as do other owners; but herein shall we not find the cause of coals being sold in London at nearly three times the price they cost at the pit’s mouth. The cause is to be sought in the expenses of transit (which, alone, are often equal to, and not unfrequently exceed, the cost price); in the loss of screening; the expenses of lighters and lightermen wharfs, officers, and wharfingers, coal-heavers, carmen, horses, waggons, sacks—to say nothing of long credit, or bad debts;—and the profits of the various middle-men, among the most numerous of whom are the brass-plate coal merchants (whose establishments simply consist of an order-book, wherein it appeareth that they get a little more than they give); and the retailers of various gradations. All these difficulties, and all these reductions and dues, notwithstanding, and in spite of,—the coal trade has risen during the last twenty years to a magnitude in quantity and influence which may be regarded as one of the greatest commercial triumphs of this our England. The coal-fields of the United States of America are upwards of fourteen times larger extent than ours; yet, in 1845, while the American coal mines produced 4,400,000 of tons, the coal mines of England produced upwards of 32,000,000 of tons. In the same year, our production of iron was more than four times the American amount. Moreover,—and here may the gravest historian exalt his pen, and yet be accounted no flourisher,—we have for some years past been able to supply coals to all the great powers of the globe. In 1842, England exported 60,000 tons of coals to the United States of America; 88,000 tons to Russia; 111,000 tons to Prussia; 515,900 tons to France;—not to speak of the hundreds of thousands of tons exported in the same year to Germany collectively, to Holland, to Denmark, Sweden, the East Indies and China, &c., &c.