Dear colleagues
thank you for your help on previous queries.
I teach at the University of Western Ontario, and I am doing research on the life of the Rev. Joseph Townsend (1739-1816) of Pewsey, Wiltshire. Joseph's father Chauncy was involved in coal, silver, tin, and copper mines in Wales and Cornwall. Joseph's attitude to mining may be found in "A Journey to Spain"(1791)":
"It is certainly for the happiness of this principality [Spain], that the mines are not made more productive. In mining countries, the gains are exceedingly uncertain; a gambling spirit is encouraged; agriculture is neglected; and poverty prevails. If the mineral is raised on the adventurers account; unless they discover uncommon treasures, they will be inevitably ruined. If the working miners become sub-adventurers; they either gain too little, and are wretched; or they get too much, and soon contract strong habits of indolence, prodigality, and vice. Of this truth we have melancholy proof at home [Britain]. Let any one pass through the county, which most abounds with mines, and in mining parishes he will be struck, every moment, with the sight of poverty, and wretchedness."
Apparently most of Chauncy's fortune was absorbed in mining adventures.
My question: was this a normal attitude in the 17th through 19th centuries? I can see landowners/farmers being unhappy with mining occuring on their land when it was forced upon them. Was there a literature which opposed mining on the basis of its moral effects?
Yours Richard VandeWetering
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