"Ebe intrtator" January 310, 1832.
Hardly a week passes without some event to remind us of the deficiencies of our precautionary or preventive police. This week it is a colliery explosion, by which three men have been
five or six wounded beyond hope of recovery, and eight or nine more or less seriously lacerated. Here, as in so many other cases, the accident has been traced to the use of a naked candle in a pit that has long been notorious for bad ventilation and the accumulation of explosive gas. It will doubtless be made to appear at the inquest, that the Government Inspector repaired with laudable promptitude to the scene immediately after the accident, and that his investigation into its causes was conducted with tact and sagacity. It will also be shown, that the Inspector is not invested with 'sufficient authority to take adequate mei•sures for the prevention of accidents; and that if he were, too many pits are placed-under his superinten- dence to admit of his keeping watch over them. Government Inspectors of Coal-pits are appointed to be the historians, not the preventers, of accidents.
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