Chapter I: The Diamonds

The history and adventures of the ‘great diamonds’ of Eastern, Northern, Southern, and Western potentates, have been often chronicled; their several values have been estimated at hundreds of thousands, and at millions; but not a syllable has ever been breathed of their utility. The reason is tolerably obvious; these magnificent diamonds are of _no_ practical use at all, being purely ornamental luxuries. Now, it has occurred to us that the diamonds indigenous to England, are the converse of these brilliant usurpers of the chief fame of the nether earth (to say nothing of the vain-glories on the upper surface) being black, instead of prismatic white—opaque, instead of transpicuous; and in place of deriving a fictitious and fluctuating value from scarcity and ornamental beauty, deriving their value from the realities of their surpassing utility and great abundance. They certainly make no very striking figure in the ball-room dress of prince or princess; but it is their destiny and office to carry comfort to the poor man’s home, as well as to the mansion of the rich; they are not to be looked upon as treasures of beauty, they are to be shovelled out and burnt; they are not the bright emblems of no change, and no activity, but like heralds, sent from the depths of night, where Nature works her secret wonders, to advance those sciences and industrial arts which are equally the consequence and the re-acting cause of the progress of humanity.

In the reign of King Edward the First of England, a new fuel was brought to London, much to his subjects’ objection and the perplexity of his majesty. Listen to the history—not of the king, but of the great event of his time which few historians mention.

If chemical nature beneath the earth be accounted very slow, human nature above ground is comparatively slower,—and without the same reason for it. The transmutations beneath the earth require centuries for their accomplishment, and of necessity;—the proper use of new and valuable discoveries on the surface, is a matter of human understanding and rational will. In the former case, the thing is not perfect without its number of centuries; in the latter, the thing has very seldom been acknowledged without great lapse and loss of time, because mankind will _not_ be made more comfortable and happy without a long fight against the innovation. Wherefore coals, the most excellent material of fuel,—for cooking, for works of industry and skill, for trades and arts, and the cutting short of long journeys,—have only been in use during the last three centuries.

The first mention of coals, as a fuel, occurs in a charter of Henry the Third, granting licenses to the burgesses of Newcastle to dig for coals; and in 1281, this city had created, out of these diggings, a pretty good trade.

In the beginning of the fourteenth century, coals were first sent from Newcastle to London, by way of a little experiment on the minds of the blacksmiths and brewers, and a few other trades needing fuel; but for no other purposes. So the good black smoke rose from a score or two of favoured chimneys.

As one man, all London instantly rose up against it, and was exceeding wroth. Whereof, in 1316, came a petition from Parliament to the king, praying his Majesty,—if he had any love for a fair garden, a clean face, yea, or a clean shirt and ruff,—and if he did not wish his subjects to be choked, or, at the very best, to be smoked into bad hams,—to forbid all use of the new and pestilent fuel called “coals.”

So the king, seeing the good sense and reasonableness of the request, forthwith issued a Proclamation, commanding all use of the dangerous nuisance of coals to cease from that day henceforth.

But the blacksmiths and brewers took counsel together, and they were joined by several other trades, who had found great advantage in the use of coals; and they resolved to continue the same, as secretly as might be—forgetting all about the smoke, or innocently trusting that it would not again betray them.

No sooner, however, did the black smoke begin to rise and curl above the chimneys, than it was actually seen by many eyes!—and away ran the people bawling to Parliament; and more petitions were sent; and his Majesty, being now very angry, ordered all these refractory coal-burning smiths, brewers, and other injurious rogues to be heavily fined, and their fire-places and furnaces cast down and utterly demolished.

All this was accordingly done. Still, it was done to no purpose; for so very excellent was the result to the different trades of those who had smuggled and used the prohibited fuel, that use it by some means they would, let happen what might. More chimneys than ever now sent up black curling clouds, and more fire-places and furnaces were destroyed; and so they went on.

At length it was wisely discovered that nobody had been choked, poisoned, “cured” into a bad ham, or otherwise injured and transformed. Now, then, of course, it was reasonable to expect, as the advantages were proved to be so great and numerous, the injuries trivial, and the dangers nothing, the use of coal would become pretty general, without more prohibition, contest, or question.

No, indeed; this is not the way the world goes on. Social benefits are not to be forced upon worthy people at this rate. Centuries must elapse—even as we find with the growth of metals and minerals beneath the earth. In the latter case, it is a necessary condition; in the former, it is made one.

The many good services and value of coals being now ascertained, as well as their harmlessness (except that they certainly did give a bad colour to all the public edifices and great houses), and the progressive increase of many luxuries of life, together with their advantages to numerous trades besides those of the wisely-valiant and not-to-be-denied blacksmiths and brewers who first adopted and persisted in using them, every facility for their importation into London was naturally expected by the citizens of that highly-favoured place. Innocent human nature! vain hopes of children, who always expect reason from those who preach it! For now, various lets and hindrances were cunningly devised, in the shape of taxes and duties, so as to check the facilities of interchange between London and Newcastle. So, the new fuel—the product of the mine destined one day to become the Black Diamonds of England—had to struggle for its freedom through a succession of “wise and happy reigns.”