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The Story of Coal-Gas 53 But all was not plain-sailing, despite the fact that private residents throughout the country, as well as manufacturers, installed plants for making coal-gas to light their homes and workshops. Oppo- sition arose, and it became very pronounced, but some of the objections were extremely naive, while others were quite rational. Whereas the latter were provoked by fears of fires and suffocation, the former were advanced from vastly different and irrelative motives. Thus, one opposition party vehemently declared that the new-fangled light would deprive Britannia of her ability to rule the waves. Why ? Because it would sound the knell of the whale-oil industry—whale-oil lamps were then widely used—and the extinction of this calling would adversely affect the whale fishery, which was declared to be the nursery whence Britain drew her sons to man her fighting ships. As the Napoleonic wars were then raging, this objection met with considerable support. But adverse public opinion could no more arrest the coming of the coal-gas than it could the recurrence of day and night. A far-seeing and enterprising engineer, who had been engaged in the erection of private plants for the supply of the new light, threw himself enthusi- astically into the development and exploitation of the new friend and servant of the community. He saw that if gas-lighting were ever to come into popular favour it would have to be generated upon an ex- tensive scale at central points, and supplied to private houses, factories, workshops, public buildings, and thoroughfares in precisely the same manner as water was delivered. This energetic engineer, Mr. Samuel Clegg, secured