from Spain than make it at home, in consequence of the great waste
of wood involved by the manufacture; but against this view Yarranton
strongly contended, and held, what is as true now as it was then, that
the manufacture of iron was the keystone of England's industrial
prosperity. He also apprehended great danger to the country from want
of iron in event of the contingency of a foreign war. "When the
greatest part of the iron-works are asleep," said he, "if there should
be occasion for great quantities of guns and bullets, and other sorts
of iron commodities, for a present unexpected war, and the Sound happen
to be locked up, and so prevent iron coming to us, truly we should then
be in a fine case!"

Notwithstanding these apprehended national perils arising from the want
of iron, no steps seem to have been taken to supply the deficiency,
either by planting woods on a large scale, as recommended by Yarranton,
or by other methods; and the produce of English iron continued steadily
to decline. In 1720-30 there were found only ten furnaces remaining in
blast in the whole Forest of Dean, where the iron-smelters were
satisfied with working up merely the cinders left by the Romans. A
writer of the time states that we then bought between two and three
hundred thousand pounds' worth of foreign iron yearly, and that England
was the best customer in Europe for Swedish and Russian iron.[2] By
the middle of the eighteenth century the home manufacture had so much
fallen off, that the total production of Great Britain is supposed to
have amounted to not more than 18,000 tons a year; four-fifths of the
iron used in the country being imported from Sweden.[3]

The more that the remaining ironmasters became straitened for want of
wood, the more they were compelled to resort to cinders and coke made
from coal as a substitute. And it was found that under certain
circumstances this fuel answered the purpose almost as well as charcoal
of wood. The coke was made by burning the coal in heaps in the open
air, and it was usually mixed with coal and peat in the process of
smelting the ore. Coal by itself was used by the country smiths for
forging whenever they could procure it for their smithy fires; and in
the midland counties they had it brought to them, sometimes from great
distances, slung in bags across horses' backs,--for the state of the
roads was then so execrable as not to admit of its being led for any
considerable distance i