The respectable body of Coal-owners, under whose auspices the invention of Sir Humphry Davy had been introduced and rewarded, felt that they owed it to their own characters to repel assertions which amounted to a charge against themselves of ingratitude and injustice: a general meeting was accordingly summoned, at the Assembly-rooms in Newcastle, on the 26th of November 1817, J. G. Lambton, Esq. M.P. in the chair--when it was resolved, "That the Resolutions passed at the Meeting of the friends of Mr. G. Stephenson on the 5th instant, impugn the justice and propriety of the proceedings of a meeting of the Coal-trade on the 31st of August 1816: "That the present meeting, therefore, feel themselves called upon, as an act of justice to the character of their great and disinterested benefactor, Sir Humphry Davy, and as a proof that the Coal-trade of the North in no way sanctions the resolutions of Mr. Stephenson's friends, to state their decided conviction, that the merit of having discovered the fact, that explosions of fire-damp will not pass through tubes and apertures of small dimensions, and of having applied that principle to the construction of a Safety-lamp, _belongs to Sir Humphry Davy alone_. "That this meeting is also decidedly of opinion, from the evidence produced in various publications by Mr. George Stephenson and his friends, subsequently to the meeting of the Coal-trade which was held on the 18th of March 1816, as well as from the documents which have been read at this meeting, that Mr. Stephenson _did not_ discover the fact, that explosions of fire-damp will not pass through tubes and apertures of small dimensions; and that he _did not_ apply that principle to the construction of a Safety-lamp; and that the latest lamps made by Mr. Stephenson are evident imitations of those of Sir Humphry Davy, and that, even with that advantage, they are so imperfectly constructed as to be actually unsafe. "That the above resolutions be published thrice in the Newcastle papers, and in the Courier, Morning Chronicle, and Edinburgh Courant; and that printed copies thereof be sent to the Lords Lieutenants of the two counties, to the Lord Bishop of Durham, and to the principal owners and lessors of collieries upon the Tyne and Wear." The following letter from Sir Humphry Davy announces the farther measures which he also had thought proper to pursue, in order to counteract the impression which the meeting of Mr. Stephenson's friends might have produced on the less informed part of the public. TO J. G. LAMBTON, ESQ. M.P. November 21, 1817. MY DEAR SIR, I shall send off by this post a copy of the resolutions, which will appear to-morrow in the Chronicle and Courier. The men of science who have signed these resolutions are the first chemists and natural philosophers of the country, with the President of the Royal Society, the most illustrious body in Europe, at their head.