The Torbane Hill Mineral

Extract

“Not many years ago,” Mr. Salter tells us in his admirable “Lecture on Coal,” printed in this volume, “the ‘bigwigs’ in England were assembled in conclave, and the élite of science was called before them” to determine what certain “lumps of a blackish brown substance” were. Was it carbon? Was it shale? Was it cannel? Was it COAL? Now it was on Friday, the 29th July, 1853, that these “bigwigs” were assembled at Edinburgh to give evidence or opinion in the great trial of Gillespie against Russell. The issues put to the jury were, “Whether the defenders are tenants of certain minerals in the lands of Torbane Hill belonging to the pursuers under a missive of agreement? and whether in the course of the period between the term of Candlemas 1850 and the month of May 1852 the defenders wrought and put out from the same lands of Torbane Hill a valuable mineral substance not let to them by the said missive, to the loss, injury, and damage of the pursuers?” and the damages were laid at ten thousand pounds.

This, in simple language, amounted to this: Gillespie had let to the Russells certain lands, with the right to dig coals; but the Russells, after they got their lease, extracted another substance preferable to coal, for the distillation of paraffin. Mr. Gillespie considered naturally enough that having let the land with the right to dig for coals, the extracting of another mineral for the purpose of making a mineral oil was the taking away of a property belonging to him; while, on the other hand, the Russells, knowing the value of the substance, and the large revenue it was producing, claimed a right to it as being a kind of coal.