cargoes which they will offer for sale on any one market day. This is to depend partly on the number of ships which enter the Thames between one market day and another, and partly on the market price of coals. They press the coals for sale only in certain quantities, in order to prevent the price from descending below a certain point. On the other hand, the Corporation, to prevent these regulations from becoming too close a monopoly, acts on a specified set of bye-laws; so that the ultimate price to the consumer is the result of a balance between many conflicting agencies. Sometimes there have been 400 cargoes of coals in the Thames at one time, waiting for their turn to be sold according to the arrangements among the factors. There is a coal factor's office at Gravesend, and a coal trade office at Newcastle; and there is such a constant correspondence between these two offices and the coal factors of London, that the exact state of the market at both ends of the route is known at all times to those concerned.

In a Parliamentary Report of 1836, the following account of the dealings at the old coal exchange was given :-"There are three market days, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, continued as before, though not required by statute, and the hours to sell and buy are from twelve to half-past two o'clock, as by the former act of parliament. Every factor has a list, setting forth the sorts of coal he has for sale on the Coal Exchange every market day; and when a cargo is sold, an agreement is entered into with the buyer, the price and conditions of payment being stated in detail, and the buyer agrees to pay 1d. per ton for half metage. All sales are private sales. The merchants may buy at all hours; but the factor will not enter his purchase on that day if it should be made after half-past two o'clock; after that hour, say on Monday, any person may buy for the next market day to deliver on Wednesday; but no factor will sell to deliver on Tuesday, as that would be against the regulations; and the factors will not take the consignment of coals, unless the owner complies with their rules and regulations; that is, to have their cargoes sold in rotation. Factors are paid by a commission of one half per cent. on the amount of sale, and three pence per ton factorage; and they take the risk of the merchants for payment.' These regulations have been continued with but little change ever since; it is possible that a few modifications and improvenients may be introduced in the arrangement of the new building. The old Coal Exchange belonged to private individuals till 1807, when the Corporation purchased it, to make it an open Coal Market. It was in 1845 that the leading firms in the coal trade petitioned the Corporation to build a new Coal Exchange. The Corporation assented; Mr. Bunning, the City Clerk of the Works, was commissioned to make plans and drawings; and the remarkable building just finished is the result.

As the meters' establishment of London was abolished in 1831, the coal owners, factors, and merchants, have agreed among themselves on a system of weighing, to ensure accuracy of dealings. A committee of owners and merchants (or sellers and buyers) manages the system and pays for the services of a large number

of weighers; the buyer and seller sharing the expense between them. In 1830 the expenses incurred by the merchant, from the time he bought a ship load of coals to the deposition of the coal in the cellar of the consumer, amounted on an average to as much as 11s. per ton-comprising commission, lighterage, cartage, shootage, metage, market dues, land metage, and other items. By the year 1836, these expenses had been reduced to 7s.; and at the present time they must be considerably lower. The coal owners and merchants have nothing to do with each other under ordinary circumstances, although they are the real sellers and buyers; the factor acts for both: the merchant is responsible only to the factor, and the factor to the owner. Excepting in the case of very large purchases, for gas works, breweries, and other extensive establishments, all the coal used in London passes through the hands of the merchants, who for the most part have their own barges, wharfs, waggons, and horses.

The actual discharge of the coals from the ships to the barges drawn up alongside, is a distinct system from all the other arrangements. The corporation, the coal factors, the coal merchantsnone of these are concerned in the matter. The ship owner acting for the coal owner, or for the party who pays the freight of the vessel, hires and pays for the services of the men who make the transfer of the coals. For some reason or other, the crews of the coal ships seldom perform this duty; they either do not like it, or they are not equal to it, or the captain prefers another plan. The persons employed are coal-whippers, strong labouring men whose services are always available for this work. They work in gangs, usually of nine each; and the agreement is always so much per ton for the whole gang. The terms are usually about a penny per ton per man. The coal merchant who has bought the cargo, sends his barges to the side of the ship; and the gang of coal-whippers work on until they have emptied the cargo into the barges. Some of them descend into the hold, and fill the baskets or boxes with coals, and others draw up the laden baskets by means of ropes and pulleys, and empty the contents into the barges. The work is the coarsest and rudest kind of manual labour. Nine men can whip about 80 or 90 tons in a day. The men can often earn a shilling an hour each while at work; but the number of hours' work obtain. able in a week is subject to much fluctuation. It seems plain, however, that the earnings are decidedly above those of labouring men generally. There are from 1,600 to 2,000 men thus employed in the Thames; and they have often found means to make the position of interlopers into their trade anything but agreeable.

Until within the last few years, these strong and hardy men suffered themselves to be duped in an extraordinary way by publicans and petty shopkeepers on shore. The custom was for the captain of a coal ship, when he required a cargo to be whipped, to apply to one of these publicans for a gang; and a gang was thereupon sent from the public house. There was no professed or prearranged deduction from the price paid for the work; the captain

paid the publican, and the publican paid the coal-whippers; but the middleman had his profit in another way. The coal-whipper was expected to come to the public house in the morning; to drink while waiting for work; to take drink with him to the ship; to drink again when the day's work was done; and to linger about and in the public house until almost bed time before his day's wages were paid. The consequence was, that an enormous ratio of his earnings went every week to the publican. The publicans were wont to rank their dependents into two classes-the "constant men" and the "stragglers;" of whom the former were first served whenever a cargo was to be whipped; in return for this, they were expected to spend almost the whole of their spare time in the public house, and even to take up their lodgings there. As the coalwhippers contrived by intimidation to keep out strangers from their trade, so the publicans and their immediate adherents were able to harass those who wished to escape from this truck system; and the " penny-a-ton men" used to receive many a drubbing from the "penny-farthing men." The captains preferred applying to the publicans rather than engaging the men themselves, because it saved them trouble; and because (as was pretty well understood) the publicans curried favour with them by indirect means. Grocers and small shopkeepers did the same; and the coal-whippers had then to buy bad and dear groceries instead of bad and dear beer and gin. The legislature tried by various means to protect the coal-whippers; but the publicans contrived means to evade the law. About 1834 Lieut. Arnold tried how far an individual could remedy the system, by establishing a coal-whipper's office, in which the men could receive the whole of their earnings, without the necessity of such constant resort to a public house; his attempt was a benevolent one, but it was hotly opposed by the publicans, and was not supported to any great degree by the coal owners and shippers. At length was passed, in 1843, an Act of which an abstract is given in a previous volume, and which has placed the coal-whippers in a more systematized position. The whole is a remarkable instance of what small matters (as they at first appear) the legislature will sometimes interest itself in.

When the coal-whippers have discharged the cargo from the ships to the barges, the coal owner, ship owner, Corporation, factor, coal-whipper-all have done their part. The merchant is then the only party concerned. He has (if in a large way of business) his own barges, wharfs, waggons, horses, sacks, weighing machines, screens, and every thing requisite for transferring the coals to the cellar of the consumer. If he is in a smaller way, he probably buys from the larger merchant. There are nearly 1000 persons in London who sell coals-from the merchant whose establishments are of great magnitude, to the small shopkeeper who sells a pennyworth either of coals or of greengrocery. The price of coals, as given in the London market in the daily papers, is the price up to the time when the coals are whipped from the ships to the merchants' barges. It includes, 1st, the value of the coals at the pit's

mouth; 2nd, the expense of transit from the pit to the ship; 3rd, the freight of the ship to London; 4th, the Thames dues; and 5th, the whipping. The difference between the market price and the price paid by consumers, is made up of the expense incurred by the coal merchant for barges, wharfs, waggons, horses, wages, &c., together with his profit and risk.

There is still one matter more to complete the chain of operations. The emptied coal ships must get back to Newcastle; and as there are not cargoes enough from London to freight them, they must take in ballast to make the ships heavy enough to sail in safety. This ballast is chiefly gravel or sand, dredged up from the bed of the Thames in and near Woolwich Reach. The Trinity House takes upon itself this duty. The captain, when he requires to sail, applies to the Ballast Office, and the required weight of ballast is sent to the ship in lighters belonging to the Trinity House; the captain paying so much per ton for it. About eighty tons on an average are required for each vessel; and the quantity thus sup- . plied by the Trinity House is, we believe, about 10,000 tons per week. Some of the ships are ballasted with chalk taken from Purfleet; all ballast taken from higher up the river than that point, must be supplied by the Trinity House. When the ship reaches the Tyne, the ballast is of no further use; but it must not be emptied into that river; it has therefore to be deposited on the banks of the river, where huge mounds are now collected, two or three hundred feet high. It is a curious example of the mode in which commercial enterprises often originate, that parties have found it worth their while to make a railway from near South Shields to a point on the sea-shore, a mile or two distant, on purpose to deposit there the ballast which has become more and more an incumbrance on the banks of the river; the ship owners pay a small price per ton for the removal of the ballast from their vessels. It is something more than a metaphor, to designate this a transfer of the bed of the Thames to the banks of the Tyne; it has a per centage of truth in it.

Thus we find, that about 12,000 persons are engaged in mining and shipping coals for London; 22,000 in navigating the coal ships from the North to the Thames; 2,000 in "whipping" the coals from the ships to the merchants' barges; and 1,000 in selling the coals to the consumers in London. How many are engaged as coal bargemen upon the Thames and upon the canals, coal heavers at the wharfs, and coal waggoners in the streets, we have no data for determining.

VII.-SUPPLY OF WATER FOR THE METROPOLIS. THE discussions which have lately taken place, and which are likely still to occupy a portion of the public attention, concerning the nature and amount of the water supply of the metropolis, have been marked in some instances by a little misapprehension of the present state of the subject. It is true that there is much reason to wish for improvement; but it is not true that the Water Compa

nies are indifferent to such improvements; nor is it true that those companies, as a whole, have reaped large profits by the existing rates indeed, with the exception of the New River and the Lambeth Companies, these undertakings have yielded, on an average, less than a fitting return for the liabilities and risks attending such heavy works.

It may be useful to place in a condensed form a sketch of the modes by which London (taking that term in a very wide sense) is now supplied with water, and of the modes in which the various companies have endeavoured to make the supply as efficient in quality and quantity as the provisions of their several acts of parliament will permit. No advocate of new schemes is in a condition to use his advocacy satisfactorily, until the present state of things is really understood. We will first glance slightly at the early modes of procuring a supply.

Spring water was formerly conveyed to public reservoirs in the city of London by leaden pipes from various springs in the vicinity, viz., from Tyburn in 1236, from Highbury in 1438, from Hackney in 1535, from Hampstead in 1543, and from Hoxton in 1546. It is chiefly to the munificence of some of the lord mayors that the city was indebted for these supplies. London-bridge water works were formed in 1582, with water-wheels turned by the flood and ebb current of the Thames, passing through the arches of old London Bridge, and working pumps for the supply of water to the metropolis; these were the first works which supplied water to the houses, for before that period water had only been supplied to public cisterns, from whence it was conveyed, at great expense and inconvenience, in buckets and water carts. The opening of that great undertaking, the New River, by Sir Hugh Myddleton in 1613, commenced what we may term the modern systems of supply. These systems we may best illustrate by viewing the condition of the water supply of the metropolis as it was in 1845, and then noticing a few minor changes since introduced.

The state of the water supply of the metropolis in 1845 was as follows:-There were nine water companies, viz., six north of the Thames-the New River, the East London, the Hampstead, the Grand Junction, the West Middlesex, and the Chelsea Companies; and three south of the Thames-the Vauxhall, the Lambeth, and the Southwark Companies. The New River Company obtained its supply from the Rivers Lea and Amwell; the East London Company from the River Lea, the Hampstead Company from springs near Hampstead; the Grand Junction Company from the Thames, near Kew; the West Middlesex Company from the Thames, near Hammersmith; the Chelsea Company from the Thames, near the Red House, Battersea; the Vauxhall Company from the Thames, near Vauxhall Bridge; the Lambeth Company from the Thames, near Waterloo Bridge; and the Southwark Company from the Thames, near Battersea.

In looking at the mode in which the giant metropolis was divided among these nine companies, we find the following arrange