slave in some aspects, it seems as if it were our master in others.

Finally, we have to ask, What of our export coals? Rapid as has been the
growth of our total production during the last twenty-three years, the
growth of our export of coals has been greater still. Beginning at
4,300,000 tons in '54, we find it reaching 16,250,000 tons in '76, and
an increase at a corresponding ratio up to the present date as far as
statistics will carry us. At such a rate of increase it would seem as
if our whole annual production would be ultimately swallowed up in our
exports, and it is not, perhaps, impossible that after we have ceased to
be to any great extent a manufacturing people, a certain export trade
in coal may still continue. Just the same as the export trade in coal
preceded by centuries our own uses for it other than domestic, so may
it also survive these by a period as prolonged. If our descent from
our present favored position be a gradual one, much may be done in the
interval to adapt ourselves to the future outcome, but it is certain
that nothing will be done except under the stern persuasion of
necessity.

When our coal fields become exhausted, be it soon or late, he would be
a wise or, perhaps, a rash speculator who fixed himself to a year or a
generation. Being inevitable, the best philosophy is to make our decline
more gradual and less bitter. Sentimental regrets that these hills and
valleys will no longer resound with the din of labor, or be blackened by
the smoke of the factory, would surely be out of place. What we might
regret is that Britain, which we know and are proud of, the Britain
of great achievements in politics and literature, of free thought and
self-respecting obedience, of a thousand years of high endeavor and
constant progress, was indeed to perish when these factories and
furnaces whirled and blazed their last. But, it is not so. This