THE CORNISH PUMPING ENGINE. 
13 
the other mining districts of England, and even parts of the Continent also, were 
availing themselves of its use with great rapidity; and it is not less remarkable that 
after a lapse of a quarter of a century, the engines should suddenly have come into 
use, and been introduced all at once, as it were, in large numbers, throughout the 
whole of the county and neighbourhood. The explanation of these facts, which does 
not appear to have been ever yet explicitly and satisfactorily put on record, will be 
found in the following considerations. 
19. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, all coals sea-borne were subject 
to a heavy duty, which made the price so high, that the new engines would have 
consumed more than the profits of the mines where they were employed; since all 
the coal used in the Cornish district was brought by sea from the collieries of South 
Wales. 22 The duty alone on the coal required for one engine amounted to nearly 
£ 350 per annum; and with such a burden upon the employment of the machine it 
is scarcely to be wondered at that in places thus situated, parties to whom it would 
otherwise have been a great boon, should long have hesitated to make the outlay 
necessary for its adoption, having such an indifferent prospect of economy from 
its use. 
♦ 
20. The miners of Cornwall, however, could not fail to perceive the vast benefit 
they would derive from the invention of the steam engine, were the restrictions on 
the importation of its fuel removed; and indeed they were impressed with the idea 
22 The following remarks, from M'Culloch’s ‘Dictionary of Commerce,’ (edit. 1840. Art. Coal,) are well 
calculated to illustrate the nature of the grievances arising from the impost here referred to. 
“ It might have been supposed, considering that coal is a prime necessary of life, and by far the most 
important of all the instruments of manufacturing industry, that it would have been exempted from every 
species of tax, and that every possible facility would have been given for its conveyance from the mines to 
the districts in the south of England, and other places in want of it. But such, we regret to say, has not 
been the case. The coal trade of Great Britain has been for more than a century and a half subjected to 
the most oppressive regulations. 
“ Exclusive of the corporation duties in particular places, a duty payable to Government was laid on all 
sea-borne coal in the reign of William III., which was only repealed (for the kingdom in general) in 1830. 
This duty was at once glaringly unjust and oppressive; unjust, inasmuch as it fell only on those parts of 
the empire to which coals had to be carried by sea; and oppressive, inasmuch as it amounted to full fifty 
per cent, upon the price paid to the coal owner for the coal. 
“ Besides this striking partiality and injustice, various troublesome Custom-house regulations were 
required, in consequence of distinctions being made between the duties on large and small coal, between 
those on coal and culm (a species of coal), and coal and cinders, and of coal being allowed to be imported 
• duty free into Cornwall, Devon, &c., for the use of the mines. (This alludes to the draw-back granted in 
1741, and mentioned in the next article.) These distinctions are now, however, wholly abolished, and no 
duties exist on coal except those collected in London and a few other ports, and appropriated to local 
purposes.”