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Coals

There is a Coal Exchange in Thames street. The great dealers only have gained possession of it;—they have got a sort of monopoly of the market, the consumers having no control over it. But the great evil is the want of an equalization of the coal duties. Land coal metage also requires legislative correction. About 1,200,000 chaldrons are consumed in Middlesex and Surrey; of this quantity, at least two-thirds are for domestic purposes, and pays 6d. per chaldron land metage, making the enormous amount of 20,000l. annually. This heavy and useless tax may easily be dispensed with, we are confident, and the interests of the public full as well protected. In 1816, an act passed, establishing a principal and labouring coal meters for Deptford, Greenwich, and West Kent. The inhabitants soon discovered that there were more frauds committed under that act, than they had experienced before; and in 1817, they brought the subject before parliament, and got the act repealed.

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Source: Leigh's New Picture of London. Printed for Samuel Leigh, 18, Strand;
by W. Clowes, Northumberland Court. 1819