But before the report was published, and while the state was still examining the question, it had become complicated by disputes between producers and carriers, and especially between the coal-owners and the railways. In a petition presented to the Senate in 1858 by the coal and barge owners jointly, they complained that while on the one hand the cost of canal carriage was exaggerated by the taxes which, though reduced, were still imposed on inland navigation, the railways, on the other hand, made an unfair use of the high tariffs which they are allowed to charge in virtue of concessions granted them for the most part before the coal trade had assumed its present importance. They alleged that the railways neglected no opportunity of buying up the canals, and of crushing competition by a temporary reduction of prices, returning again to high rates directly they had got rid of a rival. They stated, furthermore, that the railways, especially the Chemin du Nord, while accepting reduced tariffs for the carriage of Belgian, Prussian, and English coal, in order to beat the canals, maintained their full rates against the French coal-owners. This petition is full of inaccuracies, but it is not necessary to refute them here, because they only relate indirectly to the subject. The point to establish is that in 1858 the coal-owners declared in a public petition, put forward by their united committee, that they were being ruined by the railways, and that they called on the state to protect them by a further reduction of the canal dues and by the suppression of the conditional tariffs adopted by the railways.

Now it might be supposed that when a whole body of traders came forward with such allegations and such demands, it was because there was a serious foundation for their complaints. It might also be supposed that with a constantly increasing production of coal and a simultaneous development of the means of transport (it has just been shown that the length of railways in France has risen 150 per cent. in the last eight years), the sale price of coal at the pits had considerably diminished, and that it was because their profits were falling that the mine-owners called on the state for help.

But the exact contrary was the fact. The position of the coal-owners had never been so brilliant, their profits had never been so large, as in 1858, when they put in this petition. The government taxes on coal, which are based on the price at the pit, furnish official proof of the fluctuations of value. They show that in 1847 the mean price for all the mines of France came out at 6s. 7d. per ton; in 1848 and 1849 it rose to 8s. 10d.; from 1850 to 1852 it stood at about 7s. 10d.; while in 1859 it amounted to 10s. 1d. These figures, being averages, do not represent the variations which naturally existed between the prices of different pits; for instance, in 1851 some of the mines of the Haut-Rhin sold their coal on the spot as high as 17. 4s., while in the Aveyron the rate was only 4s. 4d. These are the two extremes. In the three principal basins the prices for 1851 were as follows: Loire, 6s. 10d.; Nord, 9s.; and Gard, 5s. 8d. But without stopping at these details, the singular fact comes out that the mean price of coal at the pit got up, for all France, from 6s. 7d. in 1847 to 10s. 1d. in 1859, so that as the production rose in the same period from 5,153,204 to 7,482,571 tons, an increase of sale of 45 per cent. was accompanied by an increase of price of 53 per cent., though, as all French engineers acknowledge, the cost of extraction had materially diminished in the interval.

These were the real circumstances under which the French coal-owners called on the state to damage the railways for their benefit.

The report just quoted of the Minister of Public Works alludes to the rise which has taken place in the price of coal at the pit, and even argues thereon as a further proof of the necessity for creating facilities of carriage, but it does not examine the causes of the rise; on the contrary, it says that "it is not necessary to examine them here." It seems strange that while the declared object of the government is to reduce the price of coal, the causes of the recent extraordinary increase of its value should be passed over in silence in an official document of which the professed purport is to indicate the remedy for that increase.

When the French coal-owners are asked how it is that their prices are so much higher than those of other countries, they reply that coal costs necessarily more to raise in France than in England for instance, because their seams are generally thin and disadvantageous to work; because, from the high price of iron, their tools are dear; because they have a royalty to pay to the state; and because they are put to expense by the interference of the government engineers in the details of their trade. There is a certain amount of truth in these explanations, but the effect of such circumstances is really very limited, and they are utterly insufficient to account for a rise of 3s. 6d. per ton since 1847, or to show how, while 6s. 7d. was a sufficient price in that year, coal could not be sold under 10s. 1d. in 1859. While French coal averaged the latter rate from 1857 to 1859, the English mean price in 1858 (according to official documents quoted in the Journal des Economistes for June last) was 5s. 2d., or just half the French price. No one can pretend that such a difference as this was produced by insignificant variations in the conditions of extraction. The real source of the present disproportion of price between England and France, and of the rise since 1847, is found elsewhere, and it is the very petition of the coal and canal owners which, instead of helping them, has had the effect of directing attention to their real position.

The official figures prove that so far from crushing the canals, the opening of railways has largely increased their traffic. Before railways existed in France, the price of transport of coal by the rivers and canals varied from d. to 3d. per ton per mile. These rates, which included the tax to the state, left a fair profit to the bargemen. The railways, on their first establishment, began to carry coal at from 1d. to 1d., so that at that time they in no way competed with the boat interest; it is only during the last few years, since the coal traffic has become an important item of their receipts, and their means of transport have improved by experience, that they have been able to reduce their tariffs. The Chemin du Nord now charges d. to all comers for distances not less than 180 miles, while the other lines are all dearer, the average being about 3d. for long and short distances together. All that the railways have done is, therefore, to come down by differential tariffs for long distances to about the old canal price, so that there is really no damage done to the bargemen at all. But even if it were shown that the price now earned for water carriage is less than it used to be, there is compensation in the increase of traffic. For example, in 1850 the whole importation of Belgian coal was 1,707,000 tons, of which part was carried by railway and part by canal; but in 1857 the canals alone brought in 1,724,000 tons from Mons and Charleroi, while the Chemin de Fer du Nord transported

THE FRENCH COAL-TRADE.

only 575,000 tons from the same sources; so that in that year, which presents the same average as the preceding ones, inland navigation obtained nearly three-fourths of the Belgian traffic. A stronger example still of the recent extension of canal carriage is, that the amount of the navigation tax rose from 200,000l. in 1838 to 416,0007. in 1853, and this augmentation, which proves a proportionate increase of traffic, took place almost exclusively on the canals alone, for they paid the state 103,000l. in 1838, and 296,000/. in 1853. Transports by water have therefore doubled since the construction of railways; the railways have created so large a trade that the canals profit by the general impulse. The only advantage of the railways over the canals is that they carry regularly in all seasons, while the canals are stopped in winter by frost and in summer for cleaning. The railways offer a certainty of arrival which did not previously exist, and one of the first results of the Chemin du Nord was to put an end to the rise of fifty or sixty per cent., which formerly took place on coal every winter in Paris as soon as the canals were frozen, and which cost the Parisians some 200,000l. a year.

It is therefore evident, that while the establishment of railways has It was not greatly developed the coal-trade, it has done no harm to the canals, for the lowest railway tariffs only just reach the old canal rates. because they were really damaged that the bargemen were put forward by the coal-owners as sufferers deserving of public sympathy, but because they hoped to distract attention from the growing price of coal by a combined attack against the so-called railway monopoly, whose first victims they professed to be.

The complaints of the coal-owners are, if possible, even less founded While petitioning for reductions of the than those of the canal men. cost of carriage, while their sale price was rising, and while their success was so great and universal that the 201. shares of the new mines just opened in the Pas-de-Calais were selling at 80l. to 100l., the country was paying 1s. 54d. per ton duty on the foreign coal needed to make up the supply. And the duty was not the only source of protection; Belgian coal, which is the great rival of the northern French miners, paid, in addition, 1s. 8d. more for various expenses of carriage to the French frontier, so that the margin in favour of French coal was 3s. 14d. per ton, which constituted just so much extra profit for France. It is obvious that if the Belgians, who work the very same seams as the northern French, can sell their coal at a profit in France with 3s. 1d. extra expenses thereon, the French coal-owners, who sell at the same price and The home raise their coal at almost the same cost, put into their pockets not only the same first profit as the Belgians, but this 3s. 1d. also. production being insufficient for the demand, and two-fifths of the whole consumption being imported under duty with special charges for carriage, it follows that, as these additional expenses cannot be suppressed on foreign coal, its price cannot be diminished. So long, therefore, as the French coal-owners keep their supply under the demand, so long will the present price be kept up, not only for the foreign sellers but for the home producers also. The interest of the French coal proprietors is to maintain this standard, and it is fair to suppose that they are doing so resolutely and by agreement between themselves, for otherwise, having a certainty of sale, they would increase their own production and lower their prices against foreigners and each other.

In their eagerness for protection, not only by duties on foreign importation, but also by reductions on the tariffs of transport, they forget that they upset the great protectionist argument that high import duties enable a country to produce in safety enough for its own wants: in this case the only effect of the coal duty has been to add 1s. 54d. to the price, and that for the sole benefit of the coal-owner.

It has just been stated that the railway tariff for coal has gone down during the last twelve years from 14d. to an average of d. per ton per mile, but instead of producing a corresponding reduction in the cost of coal delivered to consumers, the returns prove that the average of the latter has actually increased in the same interval from 16s. to 17. 3d.; and this is not a private calculation, the figures are given by the government in the report on the state of the empire, which was presented to the Chambers in February last. This augmentation of twenty-five per cent. may, perhaps, have proceeded from increasing demand, or from some other cause which is not yet traceable, but it certainly in no way arose from the simultaneous rise at the pit's mouth. That rise, as will be understood from the foregoing statements, has taken place simultaneously with the economy realised in the cost of railway carriage, and it represents almost exactly the amount of that economy, for as all the coal of France is transported to a general mean distance of sixty miles, it follows that the saving of d. per ton per mile which has been effected during the last twelve years, amounts to 3s. 9d., a figure almost identical with the addition of 3s. 6d., which has been simultaneously and progressively made to the old pit price of 1847. This 3s. 9d., instead of being a gain to the public, has been tranquilly pocketed by the coal-owners, who thought that their buyers might just as well pay the same price as before for coal delivered, and so added the value of the reduction, as it arose, to their own price at the mine.

The truth is, that every successive economy in the cost of transport has been accompanied by a successive corresponding addition to the price at the pit, and this is the explanation of the fact that while that price was 6s. 7d. in 1847 it is now 10s. 1d.

And it was under such circumstances as these, with a production purposely kept down to only three-fifths of the quantity consumed, a price just double that paid in England, a high protective duty, and gigantic profits, that the coal-owners complained in 1858 that the railway monopoly limited their sale!

The French coal-owners are protected from foreign competition by the simple fact that, with the exception of certain frontier departments, which are far distant from the inland coal-fields, and which are, therefore, obliged to supply themselves from abroad, the cost of carriage alone on so bulky an article augments its price sufficiently to cover the home producers. The maintenance of a duty has only the effect of correspondingly increasing the price at which French coal can be sold: the country pays 300,000l. a year in duties on foreign coal solely to enable the French producers to realise as much additional profit.

If from war, or any other cause, the supply of foreign coal were to be cut off, the price of French coal would double or triple; it would not be pleasant for the country at large, but what a fortune the coal-owners would make!

MADAME DE KRUDENER.

WOMAN OF THE WORLD, AUTHOR, PIETIST, AND ILLUMINIST.

JULIA BARONESS OF VIETINGHOFF, was born in 1766, at Riga. Her father, who at one period had enjoyed a high place at court, had withdrawn from thence, and lived like a feudal baron of old at his château in Courland. It requires to have seen these castles of the nobility on the Baltic to understand what a sense of grandeur and of solitude might be imbibed by a child brought up in such a place. Immense plains, only dotted here and there by some struggling colony of Germans, or by the miserable huts of the native peasants, stretch far away beyond the horizon around the seignorial residence, which is itself often of an imposing grandeur and extravagant proportions. Already, in the time of Catherine and of Elizabeth, the nobles began to build palaces in these arid steppes, or amid the dark pine forests.

The life of such a feudal lord was as curious within as its contrasts were great without. In the time of the Empress Anne-whose husband was himself Duke of Courland-such barons had all the pride and insolence of petty tyrants; and they avoided the court of St. Petersburg, where, however haughty they might be, they were forced to bend. It was in vain that Anne and Elizabeth summoned the young nobility to court. It was not till the Princess of Anhalt Zerbst took with her the love of the fine arts and of science, intellectual life and vigour, to the court of the North, that the representatives of the great families of Courland, of Esthonia, and of Livonia, also found their way to St. Petersburg. But nothing could be more monotonous than life at the castle. You might walk ten miles without meeting a person with whom to exchange a word. The major-domo might be a perfect example of German civilisation, the governess from Paris or Geneva might represent either city in miniature; still their resources were soon exhausted. Winter would bring, with sledge and skating, parties on the great frozen lakes; but a winter's evening in one of these feudal solitudes of Courland was a terrible affair. The châtelain would go to sleep over his chess or his backgammon, and the châtelaine would pretend to have instructions to give to her household, but in reality would tear herself away from the horrors of a weariness that set upon her like a nightmare.

It may be imagined from this what influence such conditions of existence had upon the youth of Mademoiselle de Vietinghoff, especially as from her earliest years she was of a highly imaginative, impressionable, and somewhat fantastic nature. Those born and bred in the tumult of great cities never have the same susceptibilities; they are blunted, or they perish in the bud. A single incident of early life will serve to portray its general tone and character. She had for great-grandmother an elderly and august personage who monopolised all the respect of the house, and who uttered nothing but oracles. With regard to family matters she was an unquestioned authority; she had every event that had happened for the last hundred years at her fingers' ends. Nor was she much less intimately versed in the history of her country, especially in so far as her