At present it does not seem possible to arrive at any definite conclusions respecting the probable consumption of coal in years to come. The range of observation is not sufficiently extended. It seems clear, indeed, that the epoch is not near at hand when the present law of increase will be modified. This is shown by the agreement of the observed results during the past five years with the anticipations of Mr. Jevons. It would be altogether unsafe to predict that the yearly consumption will not rise to 150 or 200 or even 250 millions of tons per annum, or to point to any definite stage at which the present increasing rate of increase will be changed first into uniform (or arithmetical) increase, and thence into a decreasing rate of increase. But it appears to me that no question can exist that these changes _will_ take place. We might even go farther, and regard it as all but certain that the time will come when there will be no annual increase. Nay, unless the history of this country is to differ from the history of all other nations which have attained to great power, the time might be expected to arrive when there will be, year by year, a slow diminution in the commercial activity of Britain, and a corresponding diminution in the exhaustion of her coal stores. There is room for an amazing increase in Britain’s power and greatness, room also for an unprecedented continuance of these attributes, while yet the coal stores of the country remain well supplied. Let us conceive, for instance, that the greatest annual consumption of coal during the future years of England’s existence as a great nation, should be set at three times her present annual consumption, or at 350 millions of tons. Few will regard this as an unduly low estimate when they remember that it is exceedingly unlikely that the present population of Britain will ever be tripled, and that a triple population could be commercially far more active (in relation to its numbers) than the present population, with no greater consumption of coal per head. Now, to begin with, if this enormous annual consumption began immediately, we should yet (with Mr. Jevons’s assumption as to the quantity of available coal) have 570 years’ lease of power instead of 110. But, as a matter of fact, so soon as we have recognised the principle that there is a limit to the increase of annual consumption, we are compelled to believe that that limit will be approached by a much gentler gradient, so to speak, than the same consumption as attained on Mr. Jevons’s assumption. According to his view, in fact, an annual consumption of 350 millions of tons per annum will be attained early in the twentieth century; but according to the theory which sets such a consumption as the highest ever to be attained, we should place its attainment several hundreds of years later. This is a vague statement, I admit, but the very fact on which I am mainly insisting