in rising to call the attention of the House to the Report of the Select Committee on Referees, and to move—

"That it be an Instruction to Committees on Private Bills, that Referees, appointed to such Committees, may take part in all the proceedings thereof, but without the power of voting, "

said, he had to express his regret that his right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Spencer Walpole) was prevented from attending in the House that evening. In consequence of his absence, he (Mr. Mowbray) had to undertake the duty he was now fulfilling, and in doing so, he would remind hon. Gentlemen that on the 18th February last the House learnt for the first time, somewhat to its surprise, that the Referees upon Private Bills, who were not Members of the House, were shown by the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) to have been in the habit of exercising the right of voting upon Private Bill Committees. He was far from intending to blame the gentlemen who had exercised a right which they believed they possessed, and which appeared to result from the legitimate construction to be put on the Standing Orders of the House, but the majority of the House were ignorant of the fact that the Referees voted as well as sat in the Committees to which they were nominated. Under those circumstances, and upon the Motion of the hon. Member for Glasgow, a Committee was appointed to inquire and report on the position of the Referees of the House with reference to Private Bill legislation, and as to the legality and expediency of allowing them the same power of voting upon Private Bills as was enjoyed by Members of Parliament regularly elected by constituencies. The Committee had met, and he would now shortly call attention both to the statements contained in its Report, and to the conclusions which the Committee drew. The Committee were materially assisted by the evidence of two most able and experienced witnesses. One was the very able and learned Clerk of the House of Commons (Sir Erskine May), who had been so long regarded as a great authority and exponent of Parliamentary law and usage, and the other was Lord Winmarleigh, better known, perhaps, as Colonel Wilson-Patten, who could say what no other man could say, that he had sat in this House for upwards of 40 years, and, with the exception of one year, when he held office under the Crown, he had been a Member of the Standing Orders Committee for 40 years, and for a large portion of the time he had been Chairman of the Committee. Colonel Wilson-Patten was himself the originator of the Referees, who was first appointed in 1864, and who, in 1865, were constituted a Court of Referees for questions of locus standi, which tribunal was in existence at the present day. With regard to that portion of the duties of the Referees, the Select Committee proposed to make no change whatever. The success of the experiment of 1864 was so favourably regarded by that House and by Parliament that in 1867 Parliament passed a Bill by which the Court of Referees was empowered to administer oaths just the same as Committees on Private Bills. In 1868 his right hon. Friend the Member for Chester (Mr. Dodson) proposed considerably to extend the powers of Referees, and at that time Lord Hotham, then Chairman of the Committee on Standing Orders, said he had consulted that Committee on the subject, and he moved and carried a Motion by which it was resolved that the Committee of Selection might refer any opposed Private Bill, or any group of such Bills, to a Committee consisting of four Members and a Referee. Standing Orders were made from time to time in pursuance of that Motion, Lord Hotham in his speech spoke of every Committee having the advantage of the presence and assistance of a Referee, "who should have a vote, "but neither in his Motion as carried in the House, nor in the Standing Orders, was any mention made of the power of voting. It further appeared from extracts from the evidence given before the Committee that, in the opinion of authoritative witnesses, the assumed right of the Referees to vote in Committee on Private Bills was not according to Parliamentary usage, but was a distinct departure from it. Sir Erskine May declared that only those who were Members of the House should vote, and that learned gentleman also stated, in answer to a Question—

"Having fully considered all these points, if I may venture to offer an opinion on the whole case, I think that in 1868 the House made a slight slip upon the advice of Lord Hotham. "

He also added that the House had unquestionable power to regulate all its proceedings on such matters and in reference to the duties which it called upon its officers to perform, and that it could not do an illegal act on such points in such a way that any action could lie against it in any Court of Law; but, on the other hand, he declared that what had been done in the present matter was a clear departure from Parliamentary usage and Parliamentary principle. He (Mr. Mowbray) would not trouble the House further with the evidence given before the Committee; but he wished to point out that the unanimous conclusion of the Committee was, that it was inconsistent with ancient Parliamentary usage and opposed to constitutional principles to allow the Referees the right of voting; and therefore the Committee recommended that instructions should be given that the Referees should have power to take part in all proceedings of Private Bill Committees except in the exercise of the power of voting. That was the Report of a very large Committee, consisting of 21 Members, men of great experience in that House. In conclusion, he would move the Resolution, confirmatory of that Report.

said, he joined in the regret expressed by his right hon. Friend relative to the unavoidable absence of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge. At the same time, he did not think the course now proposed was the most convenient mode of giving expression to the decision at which the Select Committee had arrived. The Committee had considered their Report with exceedingly great care, and had made a very positive and explicit declaration; but he thought it would have been better if the proposal now made had been a proposal to alter the Standing Orders, instead of merely proceeding by formal Instruction to establish a practice which might hereafter be stigmatized as another slip made by this House. If a change were made, it would be better to embody it in the Standing Orders. He thought that would afford a more convenient opportunity for considering various other questions raised in the matter which could not be disposed of by the mere adoption of an Instruction of this sort. Whenever the question was again before the House, it would be his duty to invite the consideration of Parliament to the propriety of returning to the old number of Members upon a Private Bill Committee, and, instead of constituting such Committees as at present of four Members, to constitute them of live. He declared now, as he had declared when the question was before the House on a previous occasion, that he was not wedded to the desirability of keeping up the present mode of reference; he only submitted to the House that he thought the system had worked well, and that it was not perhaps desirable, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, and under the form of the Motion originally submitted by the hon. Member for Glasgow, to change a system which he thought had worked well. But he quite admitted on that previous occasion that if the question were gone into, the vote of the Referees would be found to be of so anomalous a character that it would be impossible to sustain it. He had no opposition to offer to the present Motion; but he presumed that when the right hon. Gentleman returned to the House, he would move an alteration of the Standing Orders to meet the case, and that would be the best course to adopt.

said, he wished to make one remark as to the decision to which the Select Committee had arrived, and he was the more anxious to do that, because the right hon. Gentleman who had made the Motion now before the House had unconsciously fallen into an error in stating that the evidence of two witnesses—Sir Erskine May and Lord Winmarleigh—had settled the question. No doubt, the Committee had followed the opinion given on the high authority of Sir Erskine May; but with regard to the evidence of Lord Winmarleigh, it would be in the recollection of Members of the Committee that, when the question was put to him as a matter of principle or expediency, he waived his opinion in consideration of the opinion already given by Sir Erskine May. He (Sir Edward Colebrooke) thought it right to call attention to that fact, because otherwise a wrong impression might get abroad. He could not agree with the strong opinion given by the Committee, that allowing votes to Referees was a violation of the Constitution, for it should always be borne in mind that, on the same evidence on which the Committee relied, the authority of the House was pronounced so high that it would be possible for it to suppress Private Bill Committees altogether, and refer all such measures to the reports of gentlemen who were not Members of the House.

said, he had no wish to prolong the debate upon the question, for no hon. Member seemed inclined to oppose the Motion before the House. He would only say that he was himself perfectly content with the point brought before the House as being proved by so high an authority as Sir Erskine May that it was unconstitutional for this House to do what was done on a certain occasion in 1868, when, in the words of that learned gentleman, the House made a slight slip. The Committee had accordingly reported that the House ought to retrace the step. He took it from what had fallen from the hon. Gentleman the Chairman of Committees (Mr. Raikes) that this Resolution would be considered by the Standing Orders Committee, and that it would be embodied in a change of the Standing Orders. He perfectly agreed with what had been said as to the propriety of returning to Committees of five Members, for he thought it was highly desirable that they should get rid of the casting vote of the Chairman on small Committees, and should return to the former number of Members upon a Committee, but that was not the subject which was now before the House. He cordially supported the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman opposite.

asked the Secretary of State for War, When he will be prepared to state his intentions with reference to an assimilation of the offices of Principal Veterinary Surgeon and the head of the Medical Department as regards period of service and retirement; and, whether he contemplates any other steps whereby both the pay of Army Veterinary Surgeons may be increased and the path to promotion opened up to them?

, in reply, said, the subject mentioned in the Question of the hon. Gentleman was under consideration. There were, however, very great difficulties in the way. In consequence of the enormous amount of work the actuary had in hand he (Mr. Gathorne Hardy) could not fix a time for dealing with the question; but he was most anxious that the Army Veterinary department should be put in a more satisfactory state, especially as regarded the term for which the principal veterinary surgeon should hold his appointment.

asked the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Registry of Deeds Office (Ireland), have made their Report; and, if so, when it may be laid upon the Table of the House and printed?

, in reply, said, the Report upon the office referred to was not the Report of any Commissioners, but of some gentlemen who had been requested to favour the Treasury with their opinions on the subject. It was not usual to lay such a Report upon the Table; but, if legislation were necessary, full information would be given to the House.

asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether, inasmuch as the Report of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Cave) is not to be made public at present, he will, at any rate, state whether the more complete information now in his possession has induced him to modify, favourably or otherwise, the opinion previously formed by him as to the financial condition of Egypt?

Sir, though the hon. Gentleman has not, by the Forms of the House, been able to place his Question upon the Notice Paper in the shape in which he now puts it, I understand it to refer to the expressions used by myself in the course of a speech made six weeks ago, in which I referred to the opinion I had formed as to the financial condition of Egypt. I formed this opinion upon the information which I had at that time privately received from my right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham. Since then I have seen the full Report of my right hon. Friend, and I see no reason whatever to modify in any way the opinion which I then expressed. Of course, six weeks have elapsed, and six weeks make a difference in the financial position of a country where there are public bonds to be renewed from time to time. In other respects I see no reason to modify or alter the opinion I have expressed. I wish to take this opportunity of referring to something which was said the other night by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who, in answering a Question put to him, used words which I think have been misunderstood. When my right hon. Friend spoke the other day of the "unsettled condition of Egyptian finance, "he did not refer to any particular disclosures made in Mr. Cave's Report, but only to what is perfectly well known to the House and to all the world—namely, that the Khedive is endeavouring to make arrangements for the correction of the faults in the present financial condition of Egpyt, but that no decision has been arrived at. I do not believe that the publication of the Report would be injurious to the Khedive; but we are bound to respect his wishes on the subject.

asked the First Lord of the Treasury, What steps he intends to adopt for the purpose of procuring the immediate release of the Captain and second Officer of the steamer "Talisman," seeing that, in the Despatches of the British Consul, Mr. March, dated the 28th day of October and the 10th day of November 1875, he informed Earl Derby that the President of Peru had promised to liberate the crew if the Supreme Court of Appeal condemned the ship; and, what measures he intends to adopt for the purpose of obtaining compensation from the Peruvian Government for the enforced impressment of the crew?

I have referred to the correspondence, and especially to the two despatches mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, and I am bound to say that I do not think they in any way justify the statement put forward in the Question of the hon. Gentleman. His statement is that Mr. March "informed Lord Derby that the President of Peru had promised to liberate the crew, if the Supreme Court of Appeal condemned the ship. "Now, I find on referring to the Papers that Mr. March states that the President promises to release the crew when the Court of Appeal pronounces sentence—a very different statement, as the House will see, from the statement of the hon. Member. The Court of Appeal did pronounce sentence that the ship was good prize; that the captain and mate were to be tried, and that the rest of the crew were to be released. The crew have been released; the trial of the captain and mate is now proceeding, and we are expecting daily, I may say hourly, to hear the result of the trial. With regard to the question of compensation, the whole matter will be put before the Law Officers of the Crown when we receive from our Minister in Peru the statement of the crew and further information.

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been drawn to the following paragraph in the "Times" of the 24th instant:—

"South Eastern Circuit. —In another case of manslaughter, a man named Breakspeare was charged with the death of a man named Wright, at Watford, the jury acquitted the prisoner. In consequence of the present state of the law the prisoner had this charge hanging over his head for no less than eight months, without the possibility of being brought to trial, the circumstances which gave rise to the charge having occurred on the 31st of July 1875, just after the last summer assizes, there having been no gaol delivery in the winter; "

and, whether he will take any steps to prevent the recurrence of such a case of hardship?

, in reply, said, he was sorry this man had been kept waiting for trial so long. The usual practice with regard to Winter Assizes had been this—At the end of October a Return was made from all the gaols throughout the country of all the prisoners confined therein, and if six prisoners were waiting for trial in any of them a Winter Assize was ordered to be held. But, as there happened to be only one man in confinement here no Winter Assizes were held. He quite agreed with the noble Lord that it was a great hardship, and before the end of the Session he hoped to be able to submit some measure to the House which would prevent such cases for the future.

asked the President of the Local Government Board, Whether it is true that the Guardians of the Poor at Oldham advertised for a religious attendant upon their paupers without distinction of sect at the rate of £ 20 per annum, that no clergy of the Established Church had applied to be appointed, but that the Rev. Mr. Davies, a Non-conformist minister, offered his services, which were accepted; and, whether he had not de- clined to ratify the appointment of this gentleman?

The Question of the hon. Baronet scarcely gives an accurate account of what has recently occurred at Oldham. The Guardians, as I am informed, addressed, through the master of the workhouse, a circular to the clergy and ministers of other denominations, inviting them to undertake the Sunday services in succession. The payment of £ 20 was not to have been in compensation for such services, but was to have been made to the funds of the Town Mission, and that would not have been a legal charge upon the rates. It is true that I have declined to sanction the appointment of Mr. Davies, in accordance with the invariable practice of the Local Government Office, which holds that the chaplain of a workhouse must be a clergyman of the Church of England. This view is in accordance with the opinions given so long ago as when Lord Campbell and Lord Cranworth were Law Officers of the Crown, and was confirmed more recently in the time when Lord Coleridge and Sir George Jessel held the same appointments.

asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether his attention has been called to a recent judgment of Mr. Ingham, the stipendiary magistrate at the Hammersmith Police Court, in the case of Joseph Hadley, a boy charged by the Excise for using a pistol without having a Gun Licence, when Mr. Ingham is reported in the public prints to have read, the definition of a gun in the Act 33 and 34 Vic. c. 57, which says—

"In this Act the term 'gun' includes a fire arm of any description, and an air gun or any other kind of gun from which any shot, bullet, or other missile can be discharged, "

and then dismissed the boy, on the grounds that a pistol was not a gun within the meaning of the Act, as "all the provisions of the Act applied to guns and not to pistols; "and, whether he has made any representations to the Home Office on the subject?

, in reply, said, so far as he understood the ground on which the boy was discharged from custody, it was, not that the article in question was not a gun or pistol, but that it was a toy. Anyhow, the Board of Inland Revenue were dealing with the matter.

, in rising to move, as an Amendment, in page 1, line 13, before "ship" to insert "British, "said, he felt profound thankfulness that the opportunity had arisen for him to state to the House some of the terrible evils from which the Merchant Service was suffering, and he trusted that as the issue now before them was the vital part of the Bill, it would receive the calm consideration which it deserved. Before he should lay the evidence in favour of his proposition before the Committee he felt bound to correct a very serious misapprehension. Once in Committee that Session and once at the close of last Session the President of the Board of Trade stated that he (Mr. Plimsoll) was perpetually changing his ground, and that at the outset he had distinctly asked for a Government survey of the whole Mercantile Marine of this country. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman spoke in perfect good faith, but nothing could be wider from the fact. If the right hon. Gentleman would look to any one of the series of Bills which he had brought forward on this subject, he would find that it was nothing more than "a survey of unclassed ships" which was constantly referred to. He would enable the Committee to judge of the scope of his Amendments by repeating the instructions he had given to the able counsel by whom they were drawn up. He called his attention to Clause 3, and pointed out to him that the object of the clause was to prevent the sending of unseaworthy ships to sea; that his object was identical with that, but that there the similarity ceased, because the Bill proposed to accomplish the object in view by threatening punishment to those who sent unseaworthy vessels to sea, whereas the object of the Amendment that he wished counsel to draw was to prevent an unseaworthy vessel being sent to sea at all. He did not know whether the President of the Board of Trade omitted the word "British" intentionally or not. He supposed unintentionally, for if the omission were intentional, it would in effect amount to legislation for foreign ships in our ports, which at present it was not desirable to undertake. He did not deny that the House had a perfect right to legislate for foreign ships in British waters; but he doubted the judiciousness of such legislation at the present juncture. They would, he had no doubt, have ultimately to legislate for foreign ships, because it would be unfair to British ships to impose restrictions on them as regarded deck-loading and grain cargoes and leave the foreigner without any restriction, as that would expose our shipowners to an unfair competition, which was very far from his intention. He thought it well to pull the beam out of our own eye before attempting to pull the mote out of our brother's eye. His great object in the Amendment of which he had given Notice was to prevent rather than punish. We had experience of the latter mode—threatening punishment. The result of legislation of that kind was that in two years and a-half we had succeeded in obtaining three convictions. There had been six trials and only three convictions; but 15 cases analogous to those in which convictions had been obtained were taking place daily, so that the whole time of the Judges might be taken up with them. That would be a most costly mode of proceeding. In how few cases could convictions be obtained! If an unseaworthy ship was lost at sea, no conviction would be obtained, because the evidence on which alone it could be obtained was at the bottom of the sea. If, again, the vessel made her voyage without disaster, no prosecution would be instituted from the simple circumstance that the voyage had been made in safety. As the President of the Board of Trade had asked on a former occasion, Would they punish a man for having carried his ship safely? It was only by the rarest accident they could obtain such evidence as would carry a conviction. The method of proceeding by threatening punishment was also open to this objection—that the zeal with which the law was administered depended on very varying influences. Much would depend on the amount of excitement that might prevail on the subject. If the tide of public opinion should ebb—though, thank God, it had not yet begun to ebb—the executive energies of the Department would be paralyzed. The same remark would apply to the out ports. It was not always, even when evidence was at hand, that a prosecution was instituted. The Board of Trade daily condemned vessels as not fit to go to sea which were afterwards broken up, and there must have been the means of prosecuting the owners of many of them. Why was not that done? Simply, he believed, because they were so numerous. As to the condition in which many of those vessels were which were broken up by the Board of Trade, he would read a letter dated the 16th of March; but—that the subject might be discussed with good temper—without naming the writer, the seaport from which he wrote, or the name of the vessel. He believed the letter described correctly the state of things, when it stated that the fishermen, seeing the rotten condition of the hull, asked the parties if they wished the loan of a spade to dig her to pieces. He himself saw four men pull away one-half of her fore-quarter with a rope, without any assistance but their own hands. Another objection to the theory of threatening punishment was, that it exposed the respectable shipowners—who were the great majority—to very great uncertainty and indefinite liability; whereas, under the system he recommended, action was limited to the cases in which interference was necessary. It was also better to prevent a disaster than threaten to punish the author of it. Instead of three cases in which convictions had been obtained, according to the nearest calculation he could make, and he thought it was near the truth, there were something like 3, 500 unseaworthy vessels sent to sea; would it not be much better to prevent these when the great result might be accomplished without any interference with respectable men? His system would be not only far more efficacious, but also far less costly, and would compare exceedingly well with the three convictions the Board of Trade had effected. The survey of vessels ought to cost the country nothing. Three-fourths of the shipowners of this country paid voluntarily to have their vessels surveyed, and he certainly would not do gratuitously for a bad man what good men were ready to pay for. Again, the proposed remedy of the Bill was contrary to all the legislation of past years. Factory owners were not threatened. The law did not say that unless they boxed off their machinery, so that the people could work under certain conditions of safety, they would be guilty of misdemeanour. No; the Inspector was sent into the mills, and if he found any defect he ordered it to be attended to. Then, too, if inspection were made general, it would cease to be invidious. He wanted the law to deal with ship owners as it did with, factory owners. He wanted it to lay down the broad principle that sailors were as much entitled to the protection of their lives as any other class of Her Majesty's subjects, and that no man ought to be expected to go to sea in any ship of which he had not some assurance that it was seaworthy. The State could undertake that either per se or per alium. While accepting the duty, it was not necessary that the Government should discharge it. They might employ other agencies. In taking security for the qualifications of medical men, and in providing for the extension of elementary education, we did not ignore existing agencies. So in this case, if we conceded that sailors had equal rights to the protection of the law, we might either survey ships or accept the survey of Lloyd's. In mentioning that alternative, he did not wish to be the advocate of any particular institution; he simply wished to show how we might bring within reasonable compass the efforts necessary for securing the seaworthiness of every sea-going ship. There were in operation at Lloyd's two opposing influences; the shipowners sought economy and the underwriters efficiency, and these two interests were fairly balanced, as vacancies were filled up by elections from each alternately. So far as he could learn, Lloyd's possessed the confidence of all shipowners and shipbuilders at home and abroad, excepting, of course, the shipowners who would not expend sixpence on a ship if they could help it, but who covered themselves with ample assurances and awaited the result, knowing that they were pecuniarily safe, whatever happened. There were 9, 000 ships on the books at Lloyd's, and 900 on the Liverpool book. At present all steamers carrying passengers, and all vessels carrying mails, were surveyed; and, as it was not necessary to do the work twice over, the deduction of these would reduce the work of survey to manageable proportions. He estimated the number that required survey at 3, 500, and believed that the work could be done by the Board of Trade—at all events, with assistance; and the President of the Board of Trade had already consulted Lloyd's, who had expressed their willingness to assist the Government in an emergency. His Amendment could not come into operation until January, 1877, and he had very little doubt that the number would be very considerably reduced by the fact that survey was about to be made compulsory. As soon as the House had made up its mind that there should be a compulsory survey of rotten ships there would be a great stir, many owners would seek classification, and he would venture to predict a decrease of one-fourth or a fifth in the number would take place, for their owners would either make them seaworthy or break them up. With respect to the 3,500 ships, he could speak with tolerable precision as to the condition of more than one-half. He could assure the House that there were 1,894 of them standing in urgent need of a survey, and, altogether, there were 2, 005 that were disclassed. To that large number of disclassed ships there remained to be added a great many bad ships that had never been classed at all, and a considerable number of vessels under 100 tons which stood in the same category. He maintained that it was not only possible, but easy, to survey all these ships. The longest term for which a character was granted was the full time that a ship could be expected to be seaworthy; it was surveyed regularly from year to year, each year with increasing severity, until half the term was passed, and then there was a special survey. It rarely or never happened that a ship could pass the full term without being in need of repairs that were absolutely essential to safety. The time for the survey of most of the ships he was speaking of was very considerably overdue, and many of them required immediate attention. The classes at Lloyd's included vessels that were fit to carry tea, silk, and precious goods to any part of the world; next those that were fit to carry these articles on short voyages; next those that were fit to carry ore and coal to any part of the world; and, lastly, those that were fit to carry ore, coal, and goods incapable of injury by contact with salt water along the coast; and when a vessel had run through all these gradations, with occasional restitutions from a lower to a higher grade, it could not be denied that she required to be overhauled. The practicability of carrying out a survey was affirmed in a letter to The Times last week by the highest living authority, Mr. Lindsay, whose absence from the House was now specially to be regretted; and although Mr. Lindsay had qualified his first letter by one published that morning, the qualification was due to a misapprehension, for it was only asked that unclassed ships should be surveyed. His views were also supported by a Petition from Bristol shipowners, who suggested that seaworthiness would be secured by survey and Lloyd's classification. The Chamber of Commerce of Newcastle and Gates head recommended that there should be inspection of all sailing ships unclassed at Lloyd's or at Liverpool, and urged that, while boats and lights were looked after, it could not be of less importance to take security that a ship itself was seaworthy. They stated further that it was much better to prevent the sailing of unseaworthy ships than to punish the shipowner after they were lost. The Town Council of Leeds had also presented a similar Petition. There had also been a great meeting of the Associated Chambers of Commerce held in the Westminster Palace Hotel. The first resolution they passed was that a periodical inspection of sailing ships and steamships that were unclassed at Lloyd's or elsewhere should be compulsory. The second resolution was that, owing to frequent losses of vessels at sea, the attention of the Government ought to be given to the subject, with a view of fixing the maximum load-line. Among the Chambers of Commerce represented at that meeting were those of Dundee, Newcastle, Gateshead, West Hartlepool, Hull, Goole, Southampton, Exeter, Plymouth, Gloucester, Bristol, and Cardiff. The resolution of the Associated Chambers of Commerce described the same ships as he wished to include, and he preferred, indeed, their words to his own, because they effected the object in a manner less open to objection than his own Resolution. It might be asked how it was, if all the Chambers of Commerce were in favour of what he proposed, that there had been so much opposition during the last year or two? The explanation was very simple. The respectable shipowners knew the condition of the Mercantile Marine, and they had disapproved all along that which he had condemned. A good many who were not respectable also joined, in the first instance, in the movement, because it was respectable to do so. In 1873, however, when their own proposals were put in the form of the clauses of a Bill, and there was a chance of their being carried into law, it became a very different matter, and a violent activity was awakened on the part of every man who had a ship of doubtful seaworthiness. Opposition then arose, and the latter of the classes he had referred to, induced the former to join in it. The House, however, ought not to proceed in any vindictive manner, but it was bound to correct these evils. They were not likely to forget the importance of the shipping interest, and they were all as much interested, indeed, in the prosperity and well-being of the Commercial Marine of England as the shipowners themselves. A fact had come to his knowledge which showed how generally the survey of Lloyd's was accepted, and which would assist the Committee in forming a judgment upon the question. From a Return which he had just obtained, it appeared that the number of ships which were being built for classification in the ports of the United Kingdom on the 31st of December last was 489; the number which were being built at the same time not to be classed being only 39; while, of the 489, no fewer than 478 were being built under Lloyd's survey, leaving 11 under other surveys. Another fact would show the efficiency of the survey. He had made careful inquiries as to the ships which had been seized and broken up by the Board of Trade, and he found that in the long list of the vessels destroyed during the last two years there was not a single ship amongst them which had been classed at Lloyd's. Another significant fact was that 22 vessels which had been proved to be unseaworthy had been decided to be in that category on the complaint of the crew. Of these no fewer than 19 were found to be unclassed. A third consideration was the constitution of Lloyd's, which was not a proprietary body, or a company having a capital available for dividend, but a body representing the interests of shipowners and underwriters, and which adopted a scale of charges for surveys not more than adequate to the payment of the very able men it employed. After careful consideration, he had arrived at the conclusion that the proposals he had put on the Paper could only prejudice the respective shipowners in one way— namely, by spoiling the market for the sale of their worn-out ships. It would not be right to allow those ships to be sold; and in a letter bringing out that point, which he wrote to the shipowners assembled at the Westminster Palace Hotel, before the opening of the Session, he drew their attention to the fact that they would be recouped by the fairer terms they would obtain as shipowners in competing with the unscrupulous persons who would otherwise buy these worn-out ships. That letter was debated for four hours, but no hostile action was taken upon it. The proportion of the unclassed ships lost at sea as compared with that of classed ships proved, in his opinion, the desirability of accepting the proposal he had made, and in reference to it, a report which he had had prepared last July or August stated some facts which were worthy of consideration. The report was very voluminous, and was most carefully prepared. It showed that the total loss of British ships of 100 tons and upwards was in 1874, according to the Board of Trade Return, 593, of which number 181 were classed at Lloyd's and 412 not classed. The proportion of ships which foundered was 1· 68 per cent of ships classed and 326 of ships not classed; while the proportion of losses during the first six months of 1875 was 1·3 per cent of ships classed, and 225 per cent of ships unclassed. Well, there sprang up a system of insuring, not only at Lloyd's, but at clubs; but, after a time, the clubs had to assert themselves—some clubs insuring unclassed ships and others classed ships. An excellent illustration of the result was to be found in the evidence of Mr. J. Reilly, of the firm which had the management of seven of those clubs. They had a capital of £1,580,000, and had 400,000 tons of shipping protected. Of the seven clubs, five dealt only with high-classed vessels, and the result was as follows:—The Thames collected from its members£3 5s. per cent; the Standard, £4 14s. 3d.; the Imperial £4 18s.; the Reliance, £5 8s. 8d.; and the Oriental, £5 11s. The five, therefore, collected from their members, as the actual result of business done for losses an average of £4 15s. 6d. per cent. The average collected by the club which dealt only with unclassed ships was £ 13 9s. 1d., or nearly three times as much. He saw in The Times a few days ago a remarkable letter, from a gentleman who was unknown to him, and who showed great knowledge of the whole subject. The writer quoted the case of the clubs, and among them referred to the Star and the Sun, which dealt with unclassed ships, and each of which collected no less than £21 10s. per cent per annum; and also to the Wear Mutual Insurance, which, after collecting from its members 20 per cent, collapsed after a year in which the sum reached no less than 26 per cent. Those figures showed that if they subjected unclassed ships to some survey, the losses would be reduced to one-third the present amount, and the loss of life at sea arising from unseaworthiness would be diminished enormously. But it would be said—indeed, one hon. Gentleman was always saying it—"If you pass the Amendment, you will destroy the shipowner's responsibility. "He contended that they would do nothing of the kind. On the contrary, they would establish the shipowners' responsibility. What he asked the House to do was, to act upon the responsibility of the shipowner to repair his ships. Thus they would develop his responsibility from fiction into fact—from an abstract into a real responsibility. What the Bill said was, in effect, this—"If you send an unseaworthy ship to sea, we will try to punish you. "What the Amendment said was—"We will not let you send an unworthy ship to sea; "and if they said that, they would turn the shipowner's responsibility from shadow into substance. It was perfect nonsense to talk of holding the shipowner responsible, when he had done all that human care and foresight showed to be necessary; and after his work had been examined and approved by experts he ought to be free from responsibility and a great deal of the vexatious interference to which he was at present subject. So was it also as to the load-line. If that were adopted, it would relieve the shipowners from a great deal of responsibility, and from much vexatious interference to which they were now subject. What had this existing "responsibility," of which so much was said, done for us? It had given us four poor men in gaol, and let many ships remain out of repair and go to sea in a notoriously unseaworthy state. If the Amendment had been law during the last two years instead of the clause, it would have sent not three or four poor wretches to gaol, who, after all were not worse than hundreds of others outside who were not touched, some of whom occupied high places, but it would have prevented 3, 000 ships going to sea in a state disgraceful not only to the owners, but to a Christian nation. The experience of the Cunard Company showed what would have been the result; so also did that of Messrs. Thompson and Co., a Scotch firm, who during 35 years out of 30 vessels had only lost one, and never insured for a penny; so also with the experience of the Indian Government, who had for the last 23 years chartered more than 200 ships per annum for the carriage of Government stores, and the ships being surveyed, had only lost two during all that time. He had studied to be moderate in his language, he had carefully avoided any irritating mention of individual names, and he had endeavoured, by a strong effort, to suppress his feelings, and speak with calmness on matters which moved him profoundly, exciting in his mind a degree of hope and eager desire to which the panting of "the hart after the water brooks" was but a fleeting emotion. He had done so, because he desired to bring before the House a calm and careful consideration of the question, hoping that it would be sufficient to urge upon the House the course which, in his opinion, it ought to pursue. But he could not close his observations without reminding the House that the lives of hundreds of brave men were in the balance, and asking them to save those lives and to give to them the benefit of legislation such as the House had to its credit bestowed upon other classes of Her Majesty's subjects. Let the House remember that the life of a seaman was one of peril and much labour. It was a life of short enjoyment, which was too often a foolish abandonment to self-indulgence; but every one of them, no matter how tipsy when ashore, was too good to be drowned, if such a fate could, as it might, be prevented. If he fore-bore to speak of the pecuniary loss to the nation involved in the dreadful shipwrecks that took place, or the usefulness of seamen to everyone of them, and how necessary they were to the comfort and prosperity of the country, and how in certain events they might become necessary to the nation's life; if he had not referred to those considerations it was not because they were not true, but because he had never doubted the existence in that House of the sufficiency of that best love to God which consisted in love to man, and which would put an end to a wrong when once its existence had been demonstrated and the manner of redress had been made plain. Having said thus much, he would, move the first of the Amendments of which he had given Notice.

said, he had not interposed to stop the hon. Gentleman while speaking; but he must now say he had been addressing himself to the Amendment which followed the present one. It would not be in Order that a general discussion should ensue on the introduction of the word "British. "

said, he was anxious to rise as soon as possible after the speech of the hon. Member for Derby, in order that he might make it clear to the Committee that the point raised by his Amendment was one on which the Government were at distinct issue with him, and on which there could be no possible compromise between them. That Amendment, if carried, would not only be fatal to the Bill, but would indicate a policy, in his (Sir Charles Adderley's) opinion, productive of the most mischievous consequences to the commercial interests of the country. Before he went further he must express his regret—a regret in which he was sure the Committee would sympathize with him—at having lost his right hand in the discussion, by the illness of his hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade. The hon. Member for Derby and the Government were at variance on principles. The difference was not between prevention and cure, as stated, but between two principles of prevention. One principle was prevention of mischief by Government conduct of private enterprize, while the other was prevention by judicial liability of those who undertook such enterprize for themselves. The question was fairly put in a recent letter, doubtless written under the inspiration of the hon. Member for Derby, in which it was proposed for debate whether unseaworthy ships could be prevented from being sent to sea in a state dangerous to human life, by making those who sent them responsible for the act, or by making shipowners obtain a certificate of the seaworthiness of their ships from some other quarter. The hon. Member preferred the latter plan, and therefore proposed that every British ship should on clearing outwards obtain a certificate of her safety in hull, equipments, and machinery, excepting from the operation of his proposal two lines of ships—the Cunard and Peninsular and Oriental—and that the certificate should be obtained from Lloyd's Register, or the Liverpool Register, or the Board of Trade. He would say nothing at present of the invidious distinction made in favour of two particular lines of ships.

wished to explain that this part of the proposal was not intended to be adhered to. ["Order!"]

said, the hon. Gentleman might, by the courtesy of the Committee, explain an intention of his own, but he could not state the intention of another hon. Member.

said, that the hon. Member for Derby had frequently been obliged to alter his proposal, finding that every time he attempted to put it into form it was wholly untenable and impracticable. He, in common with every one, fully sympathized with the general object of the hon. Gentleman; but he thought he should be able to show that the hon. Gentleman's proposal would have the effect of increasing loss of life at sea, while the plan of the Government, however imperfect, would be much more likely to secure the object which they all had in view. The hon. Gentleman had based his argument for external guarantee on two grounds—the recklessness of a certain residuum of shipowners, and the number of owners—the number was stated in the letter to which he had re- ferred as 9–10—who knew nothing about the seaworthiness of their ships. The hon. Gentleman somewhat inconsistently contended that the certificates which would have to be given by the Board of Trade by way of supplement to those of the Register of Lloyd's and Liverpool would be very few; but did he suppose that although the number of Government certificates might at first be small, it would continue to be so? The Government certificate could only be a minimum pass, for they could not undertake a gradation of several degrees of classification as the Register Offices did. All they could do would be to say that the ship was safe as to her hull, equipment, and machinery, and in regard to those to give a certificate to the effect—"We can give you a pass." These certificates, no doubt, would be the easiest to get; and he apprehended therefore it was unlikely the shipowners, whose only object in using certificates was to get insurance and freight on the best terms, would continue to get them from Lloyd's and Liverpool, where they would get the same with more difficulty and not gratuitously, but with expense. But suppose the plan of the hon. Gentleman led, as he expected, only a small number of ships to be certified by the Government, they would consist partly of the best ships, which did not now register at all, and did not require to be certified, and partly of the worst, which were the very ships which the Government plan of police provided for. But the right way for the Government to deal with these worst ships was to look out for them, and prevent them from going to sea, and why should the hon. Gentleman harass the best ships in the country in order to get the worst into his classification? On general principles the Royal Commission concluded that the mode proposed in the Bill for giving the Government more stringent power to stop offenders on the principle on which they had always hitherto acted, and not any attempt to certify all ships, was the right mode of dealing with this subject. He submitted, as he had before observed, that this plan of action by the Government was not only the best for dealing with this question, but that it was the ordinary mode of Government action in this country. In other matters the Government did not search every honest man, in order to catch offenders; but the principle was to lay hold of malefactors, and to leave all men to manage their own affairs, under the necessary conditions of responsibility to others for the consequences of any carelessness or neglect on their part. Why should the Committee be asked to make an exception in the case of the most vital and sensitive interest of the country—one which had to carry on active competition with foreign countries—and interfere with its management and freedom in order to effect the safety of those engaged? The way to make ships safe was to make shipowners careful, and to make them answerable for their carelessness. The Royal Commission stated that the Government could hardly take a more efficient step to ensure the safety of British ships than by standing out of the way of the responsibility of their owners. The hon. Gentleman argued that a Government certificate would not supplant, any more than Lloyd's Register did, the shipowner's sense of responsibility. But there was a great difference between the kind of motive for obtaining and keeping a high class at Lloyd's and the motive for getting a Board of Trade pass to enable an owner to send his ship to sea with a Government stamp upon it. There was no doubt that a certificate of any sort did somewhat diminish carefulness, and why, then, should we extend the mischief by adopting a system that would tend to destroy what amount of carefulness had been left from the effects of the system of insurance? It had been said by the hon. Gentleman that the Government inspection of mines and factories was a similar thing to the proposed Government inspection and certificating of ships. But that attempted parallel told strongly against the hon. Gentleman, because, in the case of mines and factories, it was an inspection for the purpose of ascertaining whether certain legislative requirements had been carried into effect, and not a prescription by Government of any mode of working or standard of safety. The whole issue between the two plans exactly lay in that distinction. It was right that the Government should see that Parliamentary requisitions should be carried out; but it was not for the Government to say what the conduct of private enterprizes should be, or to interfere with or prescribe the mode in which they were to be carried on. His opinion was that the tendency of the present time was too much in favour of Government inspection. In regard to mines, for example, it was a question whether the system of Government inspection had effected its object. He was sure it had increased the cost of minerals to consumers in the country. The growing system of universal Government inspection was contrary to the genius of this nation, and if it were extended much further, we should soon lose that which had been the secret of the vigour and strength of the country—namely, its self-administration. Again, the proposal for a Government certificate of the construction and equipment of ships was not of so simple a nature as the hon. Gentleman represented it to be. That the Government should fix a standard and formularies in the progressive art of shipbuilding would be a fatal proposal. No art was more progressive at this moment than that of shipbuilding, but the effect of the proposal would be to paralyze invention and adaptation to the requirements of progress. Many disasters now arose from the still imperfect knowledge of steam navigation, and at such a time it would indeed be infatuation for the greatest maritime country in the world to allow its Government officials to prescribe the conditions of safety for ships, their construction, equipment, and machinery, instead of leaving the shipping interest to find out and strain every effort to adapt the art to its best effectiveness. If we took such a course, we should allow other nations with less maritime genius, though, perhaps, more scientific ingenuity, to compete more advantageously in the race with this country, while our shipowners and shipbuilders were kept looking to meet Government rules, instead of freely consulting their own interest in the conduct and improvement of the art. The maritime genius of this country in no more remarkable way showed its indomitable vitality than in its resenting and overcoming the evils of Government interference. The tendency of official surveillance was the paralysis of improvement. Government officials could not be improvers, as they must enforce specified rules, and often act against the better judgment of the profession. What class of surveyors could the Board of Trade secure, even by increasing unlimitedly the present expenditure, who would be qualified to overrule the judgment of the engineers employed by shipowners, or by Lloyd's, and the shipowners' clubs? A provision of this kind must be part of any plan even for surveying the worst ships. But you could not stop at the worst; you must include the better ones also. Nor could you stop at mere repairs of hull; you must look into machinery and equipment. The survey of passenger ships was already doing harm; the Royal Commission proposed to restrict it to sanitary purposes only, and to have no survey of hull, equipment, or machinery. In this matter we should take warning by the experience of other nations. There were only three or four countries, and those the least maritime, in which there existed such a system of survey as was suggested by the hon. Gentleman, and it was confessed to be in every case there a sham. A survey, to be worth anything, should be made during construction, and the hull inspected when empty; but the proposal of the hon. Member necessarily was for a Government certificate on every voyage at clearing, which was wholly different from Lloyd's, though proposed to be in partnership. So much for the general principle, now for the details, respecting which, he was happy to see that the hon. Gentleman, despairing of a general Government survey, and allowing that the Government could not survey all ships, had changed his plan.

denied that he had changed his plan. He had always asked, in every Bill that he had brought into the House, that the unclassed ships should be alone dealt with, and that Lloyd's and the Liverpool registries should be accepted as evidence of seaworthiness.

said he was very glad that they were to be rid of that chimerical idea; that the hon. Gentleman had finally despaired of the Government being able to certify all ships; and that he was willing to use existing machinery, such as Lloyd's Registry and the Liverpool Underwriters' Registry for iron vessels, and leave any ships unclassed by them that the Board of Trade might, by orders to be published in The London Gazette, from time to time declare to be exempt. But could the hon. Gentleman gravely ask Parliament to declare that there should be only two authorities to a partnership with Government on this subject of registry of vessels? How were Canadian ships to be excluded from the Bureau Veritas? That was the registry used by the greater part of the shipping of Canada; he might mention that no part of the British Empire was so sensitive against the plan of the hon. Gentleman as the Dominion, yet the hon. Gentleman proposed to ignore the association in which the Dominion ships were generally classified. They had expressed in their Parliament, and in strongly-worded Correspondence with Government, their resentment of legislative interference with shipping. Did the hon. Gentleman in the next place persevere in proposing that the Cunard and Peninsular and Oriental Steam Packet Companies should be specially exempted from interference, in disparagement of various lines which were in competition with them, and were all the other great lines of ocean-going steamers to be placed on a lower and suspicious footing? Were they to say that these two companies were so superior to all others, and that others were by Parliamentary stigma comparatively inferior? How long would it take for such an untenable plan to resolve itself into a wild undertaking of general Government supervision? Every step that the hon. Gentleman took to develop his plans seemed to lead him into more and more confusion. While the Government were to avail themselves of the existing machinery of Lloyd's and the Liverpool registries, were they to go partners with these private associations? Were they to do the same thing—for instance, settle at the yearly re-survey what damage was due to the underwriter, and what to the shipowner? Or were the associations to be subservient agencies to the Board of Trade? After all, the hon. Gentleman proposed to leave to the Board of Trade intact its present functions of detaining unseaworthy ships, so that he evidently distrusted his plan of catching the residuum of unclassed ships even by worrying all the rest; and he gave an ultimate appeal to the Board of Trade on all points. The hon. Member said that prevention was better than cure; but he thought he had shown that the question between them was as to two modes of prevention, one ineffectual by official surveillance, the other very effectual by judicial liability. The latter principle was the more usual, and the sounder principle. Prevention of abuses through the medium of Government control, whether alone or in partnership with private associations, as suggested by the hon. Member, even if it could be made effective, was antagonistic to the spirit of private enterprize in this country, and would be fatal to its growth. He maintained that the Bill of the Government was not only adequate to meet all cases of complaint, but it established the responsibility of shipowners for the proper conduct of their own business, and it would bring into operation the only effective check on recklessness and hazard of life.

said, that after having listened to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, he felt that they were still as far as ever from a settlement of the question; for it seemed so contrary to the conditions under which they were discussing the subject, that he confessed he had heard it with considerable astonishment. Who would surmise, when the right hon. Gentleman ended by deprecating Government interference with private enterprize, that he had been speaking in favour of a Bill which empowered the Board of Trade to detain a ship provisionally for the purpose of being surveyed, and that when she had been so detained, the Board of Trade might order some competent person to report thereon—a Bill; in fact, for the express purpose of doing, after the fashion of the right hon. Gentleman, the very thing which he had just said it was most improper for the Government to undertake. He did not understand the position which the right hon. Gentleman took. The only difference between the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman and the position of the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll) was this—The hon. Member observed that a large proportion of sea-going ships in this country were already dealt with by frequent surveys for the purpose of determining their seaworthiness, and were so dealt with in a manner satisfactory to the owners, to the underwriters, and to the public. But there was another class of shipping, part of which had been withdrawn from the survey on account of age; part, also, because their owners thought they knew a great deal more about those matters than anybody else; and part, also, because it was ad- mitted that there were owners who could carry on their business in a manner perfectly profitable to themselves, but at great sacrifice to the public. That being the case, the hon. Member for Derby founded his proposals upon these facts. On the other hand, the Government did not say—"We decline to survey ships and determine their seaworthiness. "They undertook the duty, but, instead of taking the initiative, waited till somebody brought to their notice the fact that a ship, alleged to be unseaworthy, was proceeding to sea; and then the Government, who now said it was not their duty to do those things, readily and cheerfully stepped in and did it. All that the hon. Member for Derby desired was, that the Government should carry on the survey, which they were willing to undertake, under suitable and favourable circumstances, instead of waiting for the worst and least favourable occasion that could present itself for the purpose. When a ship was filled with coals, cargo, and machinery, it was evident that a survey could not be so favourably conducted. The Government could not consistently take up the position that it was no part of their duty to examine into the condition of a ship. The right hon. Gentleman had referred to coal mines; but he would refer to railways, which the Board of Trade would not allow to be opened for traffic, until they were surveyed by an Inspector. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to make merry over the idea that shipowners knew less about their ships than other persons. But one thing was perfectly obvious, and that was this, whatever knowledge of their ships the owners might possess, it was a knowledge upon which the greater number of them did not presume to act, because they put their vessels out of their own hands into the hands of Lloyd's or the Liverpool Association, in order to give the underwriters and themselves greater security. But if he could not understand the position of the Government, still less could he understand the position of ship owners, who gave their support to the Government in this matter, for if the hon. Member for Derby sought to chastise them with whips, the Government sought to chastise them with scorpions. For the Government said—"We will make no inquiry into your bona fides, but will consider you guilty of a mis- demeanour for sending an unseaworthy ship to sea, unless you can clear yourselves of that serious charge. "Many cases might arise in which this system would bear most injuriously upon ship owners. Let them take, for example, the screw shaft. It was not at all uncommon for that part of the engine to be defective. Under the proposal of the hon. Member for Derby the owner would have the screw shaft brought systematically under the notice of the Inspectors from the moment the defect was first discovered, until the shaft was condemned. But under the Government plan, even if the defect in the shaft appeared to them in noxious, if some interested person informed them that the ship was unseaworthy, it would be stopped, and the owners would have no redress whatever. What was desired in this matter was, to enable Government to see that every merchant ship owner should produce some reputable certificate of seaworthiness of his vessel. If the Amendment of the hon. Member for Derby was carried, a great many owners would go at once to Lloyd's who did not go now; a certain number would go to the Liverpool Registry office who did not go now; and if the right hon. Gentleman was afraid to give to Lloyd's or the Liverpool Association too great a prestige, let there be a greater number of surveying bodies established. He was sorry to hear the right hon. Gentleman say that this was a question on which there should be no compromise. He would ask the Committee to consider whether, in the present state of public opinion on this subject and its probable future state, the country was likely to be satisfied with the right hon. Gentleman's proposal? There was one part of the speech of the hon. Member for Derby to which no reply had been given. He had shown that a great number of unseaworthy ships were constantly sailing from our ports, and that, in consequence, a great number of lives were sacrificed. The right hon. Gentleman did not pretend that his Bill would put a stop to that sacrifice. If the Bill should pass, many unseaworthy ships would continue to go to sea as they had hitherto done, and it was only one in 500 who would suffer from sending them. The right hon. Gentleman had said that the proposal of the hon. Member for Derby was "a folly, an infatu- ated folly, a most infatuated folly." He should be sorry to say anything offensive to the Government, or the right hon. Gentleman; but if the right hon. Gentleman believed that his solution of the difficulty would be final, it seemed to deserve more than his hon. Friend's proposal to be called "an infatuated folly." He had no hesitation in saying that the proposal of the hon. Member for Derby was a perfectly practicable and reasonable one, and one which could be carried out with greater advantage by the Government, and at much less expense than the present system. Hon. and gallant Members opposite would not mistake him, when he said that navigating officers were not fitted to make detailed examinations of the hulls and engines of ships with the view of ascertaining whether they were seaworthy or not. The merchant captains, whose appointments the right hon. Gentleman was multiplying for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of the Act of last year, knew no more about the hull and engines of a ship than did the majority of hon. Members in that House, and they were laughed at in some of the ports for the ignorance they displayed of the subject. That such was the case had been clearly shown in the report of a trial of an action against the Board of Trade which had recently appeared in The Times. In the inspection of the details of a vessel it was absolutely necessary to have technical knowledge; and, if the present system of appointing men who could not by any possibility perform their work went on, he (Mr. Reed) should bring a Resolution before the House, because he considered it was scarcely consistent with good faith towards the House, that the Government should pass a measure taking power to survey ships, and then appoint men who did not understand the subject. Doubtless, the right hon. Gentleman would reply to his observations that, for the purpose of rendering the surveys efficient, he always associated with the navigating officers men who had a thorough knowledge of the hull and engines of a ship; but the result of that course was, that the men who knew nothing of their duties had large salaries, while those who had a technical knowledge of the subject, and who did all the work, received very little for their services, He trusted the Government would not take the resolute ground which the right hon. Gentleman opposite had assumed, and that the course of the debate would show him that the Motion of the hon. Member for Derby was a moderate and reasonable one, and that by its acceptance the great agitation throughout the country on this question would be stilled, and shipowners would find themselves placed under a proper system of control, instead of occupying somewhat the position of criminals.

said, that hon. Members had at least the advantage of having a very distinct issue raised before them, and they had to choose between two distinct policies, that of the Bill and that of the Amendment. For himself, he ventured to oppose the policy of the hon. Member for Derby upon two grounds: first, because it was unsafe; and second, because, if adopted, it would be destructrive of all improvement in the construction of ships. The House ought to attach some weight to the considerable experience as to the value of official surveys which we happened to have had. According to the evidence given on the subject before the Royal Commission on Unseaworthy Ships, by a French gentleman, M. Bal, who had held the position of director of the Bureau Veritas for 40 years, and had had an additional experience of 25 years with a large underwriting association, the official surveys of merchant ships practised in France, Belgium, and Italy were always superficial, and had now become mere formalities, to which Underwriters attached no value whatever, it only being necessary when the official visit was made to conceal the defects temporarily in order to obtain a certificate. The worst result of these Government surveys was, that the moment the Government certificate was obtained there was an end of the responsibility of the shipowner; because, however unseaworthy a vessel might be when she sailed, no jury would convict the owner in the event of her loss through unseaworthiness, if he held a Government certificate that she was seaworthy at the time of her leaving port. The effect of these official surveys, therefore, was to take the whole responsibility from the shipowner and to transfer it to the Government. The truth was, that this responsibility argument was at the bottom of the whole thing. He should like to know what had the Government surveyors ever done to entitle them to be armed with the enormous powers with which it was now proposed to invest them? The tendency of the proposal of the hon. Member for Derby would be not to build ships up to the highest level of excellence, but rather to build them down to that low level just sufficient to obtain the certificate of seaworthiness. The competition for business had done more to send unseaworthy ships to sea, and so to cause loss of life, than any other cause which could be mentioned, and he hoped the competition for business between different registers would speedily cease. He altogether objected to the Board of Trade undertaking the work and the responsibility of surveying the ships in the Mercantile Marine, and giving certificates of seaworthiness to their owners. A ship might be certified for, say, 18 months, and might be perfectly safe for a summer voyage with a light cargo; but in the course of the time over which the certificate extended, it might be sent to sea in winter with a cargo of railway iron, which it was totally unfitted to carry. On the whole, he thought no single word could be said in favour of the Board of Trade assuming the responsibility of guaranteeing the seaworthiness of a single vessel employed, or hereafter to be employed, in the Mercantile Marine of this country, and he objected in toto to the adoption of any such proposal.

said, he desired to make a few remarks on the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for Derby, for the reason that when a few years ago he was at the Board of Trade it was his duty to examine into the whole question of Merchant Shipping, and to lay a Bill before the House in which the Government of the day proposed to deal with the subject, and he had therefore given the subject much consideration. While he was unable to support the Amendment of his hon. Friend, he must express his thorough appreciation of the motives which had guided him, and the efforts he had made in the direction of reform, and if his hon. Friend failed in carrying out the proposal, which he had much at heart, he would be consoled by the reflection that he had done much for the Mercantile Marine. There was more to be hoped from raising the tone of public opinion than by legislative restrictions, and his hon. Friend had done much to elevate that opinion as to merchant seamen. He had tried to look at the question from his hon. Friend's own point—that of providing for the safety of the lives of men engaged in the Mercantile Marine, and he must express his opinion that, in the long run, the operation of the Amendment of his hon. Friend would not tend in the direction of additional security, and therefore he felt constrained to vote against the proposal. As his hon. Friend had said, the Amendment he had put on the Paper was an alternative proposal to that contained in the Government Bill, and therefore it followed that by adopting it the main clauses of the Government Bill, which formed parts of a consistent whole, would become practically useless. The question must be dealt with from one of two points of view, which were based upon totally opposite principles. Either the shipowners must be left free to adopt their own means, and afterwards be held responsible for whatever mishaps might occur, or the means must be prescribed for them, and they must be held blameless as long as they complied with the law. They must therefore decide which of the two principles they would adopt. The first-named of these principles was the one upon which Lord Carlingford's proposals in 1871 and 1873 were based, and it was also the guiding principle of the present measure. The proposal of his hon. Friend, however, would not consort with that view, because it required that every vessel going to sea must have a certificate of seaworthiness—the hull, the equipments, and the machinery, must all be approved by an officer of the Board of Trade, who was besides to determine how long that certificate was to be in force. In that way it would practically throw the whole responsibility of surveying and classifying vessels upon a Government Department, and would relieve the shipowners of any liability, except that of obtaining certificates of seaworthiness before sending their vessels to sea. It was true the Amendment made an exception in favour of ships which had been classed at Lloyd's Registry, but it gave power to the Board of Trade to remove that exception if at any time it should appear that the requirements for classification and registration were not sufficient for the purpose of securing seaworthiness in the hull, equipment, and machinery of ships so classified and registered. The result of the Amendment, therefore, would, in his opinion, inevitably be to make the Government responsible for the Lloyd's survey and the Lloyd's classification. It converted Lloyd's into a mere agent of the Government, and the step from an agent to a servant was a very short one. It would be soon found that if this Amendment was adopted, it would become necessary to force upon the Board of Trade sooner or later the responsibility of conducting all surveys and classifications. This was the more clear to his mind because, in the first place, Lloyd's Registry provided no means for the survey of machinery on shipboard; and, in the second, his hon. Friend, while asking the Legislature to recognize Lloyd's classification as a certificate of seaworthiness, had himself, in his recent interesting pamphlet on Our Seamen, p. 77, pointed out that there were five classes of well-known unseaworthy vessels on Lloyd's books—namely, 1. East Coast well steamers; 2. Clyde overmasted sailing vessels; 3. over-lengthened steamers; 4, insufficiently-strengthened steamers; and 5, recently-built steamers without sheer. From that it would appear that the House was called upon to adopt a survey which, on his hon. Friend' sown showing, was unsatisfactory. The more the proposal was considered, the more it would become plain that, although most plausible, it was most insidious. The question was one which not only affected the shipowners, but underwriters and other people concerned in the shipping trade. Of these the shipowning class would doubtless be glad to see the responsibility which ought to rest upon themselves assumed by a Government Department, and it was not therefore to be wondered at that the proposed Amendment had received support from some of those very shipowners whom his hon. Friend had denounced in the strongest terms. The result of agreeing to the Amendment would not be to put an end to negligence, ignorance, and dishonesty on the part of a certain class of shipowners, but to divert it into other channels, and to cause them to exercise their ingenuity in devising means to square the Inspector, and so evade inspection, and to do as little as possible in the way of complying with the requirements of the Board of Trade. If he could assume that all Inspectors were capable and honest men, it might be very well; but there must be a very great increase of the Inspectorate, and with such an increase there would be a considerable proportion of dishonest, incapable, ignorant, and negligent Inspectors. When he was at the Board of Trade he had a profound distrust both of the utility and value of the inspections then carried on. He would say further that every political person who had served at the Board of Trade, whatever his opinions might be—from the Duke of Richmond to Mr. Milner Gibson, from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the right hon. Member for Birmingham—entertained, he believed, the same distrust of the system of inspection which already prevailed there. No State could be better served than by the permanent officers of the Board of Trade; but he had reason to believe that the heads of Departments themselves dreaded the extension of the Inspectorate, because they knew the danger and inutility of it. There was another danger in the increase of the Inspectorate, arising from the extent to which Inspectors impeded improvements. If they were honest they were afraid of responsibility. Shipowners might come to them and suggest great improvements, but they were not interested in carrying them out; they were responsible and would not allow them. This was not a mere theoretical argument; it was illustrated by practical experience. In France inspection was in full force. France was the very Elysium of inspection. Everything there which could be was inspected—the vessels, the engines, the equipments, the crew, every possible thing, but that had neither tended to the improvement of vessels or of safety to life. M. Jules Simon, one of the most eminent writers and statesmen, said—

"Amongst the grievances of our Mercantile Marine, the greatest was that of the immense number of inspections made imperative by law. The shipowners and captains are garotted by these regulations. "

But what had been the result as regarded the safety of life? This subject had been investigated by the late Mr. Graves, and the conclusion at which he arrived was that the loss of life in French vessels was as five to four in English vessels. Beyond that, our Minister in Italy, reporting on the subject, said that the official inspection of ships was a mere formality and an obstruction rather than any benefit; it gave no additional security to life, and was rather a disadvantage than otherwise. It had been said that the Amendment of his hon. Friend only proposed to apply to ships the system which had already been carried out in regard to mines. But it was not so. The inspection of mines was not periodic. The Inspector was only called in upon complaint being made. No doubt he had to inquire into accidents, but it was no part of his duty to inspect mines within his district periodically. That was done advisedly by Lord Aberdare, who, in introducing the Bill, said it was not the intention of the Government to share the responsibility of the mine-owners. The same course was taken with regard to railways. There was an inspection before a line was opened, but after that the State declined to allow an inspection of the working of the line, on the ground that it would be unwise to interfere with the general management. The Government measure before them proceeded on precisely the same principles as the Mines Regulation Act. As mines were condemned if they were worked on unsafe systems, so vessels were condemned if they were found to be unseaworthy; and in both cases the Government objected to divide by regular inspection the responsibility with the proper managers. The Legislature had hitherto declined to recognize the periodic survey of vessels, still less to grant certificates of seaworthiness. The superior officers appointed by the Board of Trade last year could stop vessels which they had reason to believe were in an unseaworthy state. The Government officials ought to keep their eye on ships which had run off their classes through unseaworthiness. He thought it would be their duty to stop such vessels and have them surveyed; but, at the same time, it would be wise to avoid a periodical survey of vessels or classes of vessels. Indeed, he could not doubt that the instructions given to the principal officers were somewhat to this effect. As the Act had been only one year in operation, it would hardly be wise for the House now to adopt for the first time an entirely new policy with regard to Merchant Shipping. Therefore he hoped, and he would appeal to his hon. Friend not to press that particular Amendment, but to wait and see what would he the result of the Act as amended by the measure at present under discussion. He believed a careful investigation of the statistics would show that by far the greater proportion of losses of British vessels at sea occurred from causes over which no Government measure, nor even the proposal of his hon. Friend, could have any effect. Unseaworthiness had nothing to do with most of them; they were due to the negligence and ignorance of the officers and crews. He would not carry this argument too far, but he said it was impossible for the Government to maintain even the standard of Lloyd's if they had a compulsory survey. If the Committee adopted the Amendment, it must recognize classes of vessels very inferior to those at present on Lloyd's Register. It would then be necessary to recognize a low standard of seaworthiness, and that would become the maximum of seaworthiness for large classes of other vessels. One chief cause of our maritime greatness was that our commerce had been left to its free development, and not trammelled by State regulations and State surveys. Instead, therefore, of adopting a general system of survey, and giving certificates of seaworthiness, we ought to endeavour to place responsibility on shipowners, so as to make the trade of a negligent or dishonest shipowner unprofitable and impossible. In that way he thought the object of his hon. Friend would be attained equally as well as by the adoption of the course he had proposed.

said, he would recall the House to the real business that was before them. The fact, was, they had already all that legislation which the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) had so eloquently declaimed against. No proposals submitted by the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll) had ever been so bad as the legislation under which shipowners already laboured, and which the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) had done his part to obtain. The Acts of 1871, 1873, and part of the Act of last Session formed together a meddlesome, petty, and annoying system of inter- ference, carried on by a needless number of surveyors. That legislation had already exhibited all those ill effects which the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken said would follow from adopting the proposition made by the hon. Member for Derby. It had been mentioned that 700 vessels had been stopped for unseaworthiness. Some only of these vessels were really unseaworthy. Many of those improperly stopped were coasting vessels—the costermongers of the sea. They might not be thought to be of much consequence to the right hon. Gentleman; but at every seaport in the Kingdom the already existing legislation was complained of as meddlesome, interfering, and useless. When he came to the House that evening, he did not intend to support the Amendment of the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll), because he could not accept his particular proposals as being the right way to deal with, the question; but he did think that the general principle of a survey, at the proper time and under proper conditions, was a principle which ought to be carefully considered by the House, and which in some modified form should be adopted. The hon. Member for Warwick (Mr. A. Peel) said in the course of his speech that there were only two principles between which the House had a choice—the principle of responsibility and one of interference, and that those principles were necessarily separate and antagonistic. He thought that the Board of Trade was endeavouring to put in force both those principles, and that within reasonable limits they were neither separate nor antagonistic. But, so far as the legislation of recent years was concerned, they they were both of them in every way up to the present time an almost total failure. He did not say that every system of survey was bad, but rather that the existing system should be amended. It would be wrong, he considered, to relieve shipowners from proper responsibility; but there were responsibilities which were unreal for the rogue, and real only as against the honest shipowner. The noble Lord the Member for South Northumberland (Lord Eslington) had referred to several cases to which he would refer, because he happened to know where the noble Lord got his information from. His Lordship spoke of surveys by the Board of Trade as being likely to stop ship improvements. That they had sometimes done so there could be no doubt; but he remembered three large steamers, belonging to three different companies, and in each case the owner was one of those improving people. One man had peculiar opinions about boilers, and he had a quarrel with the Board of Trade, not only with the local surveyor, but with the Department in London, and the Board of Trade refused him a certificate. The ship was put to a proper trial, and it resulted in his boilers coming out. In the second case the interference was because of a propeller shaft which was put on board, and the Board of Trade was perfectly right in preventing passengers from being taken to sea in large numbers in a ship which was not reasonably safe. The third case was that of another man who considered himself badly used about the boilers. He objected to the interference of the Board of Trade. His ship went to sea, but in the end his boilers blew up. These cases helped to demonstrate the necessity in some form of an official survey, but did nothing to justify the present system of petty interference. [Lord ESLINGTON: These cases were not in my mind's eye at all.] He (Mr. Mac Iver) would not trouble the House any further at that time, but would move the rejection of Clause 3 at a later period; but after the unfair way in which the hon. Member for Derby had been met, he thought that on the present occasion he ought to go into the Lobby with him.

said, he was disappointed at the course taken by the noble Lord the Member for South Northumberland (Lord Eslington). Since he had had the honour of a seat in that House he had always found the noble Lord take the side of justice; and as he thought that in this case justice and right were on the side of the hon. Member for Derby, he expected that he would have found an advocate and supporter in the person of the noble Lord. He thought the facts stated by Lord Eslington ought to have satisfied him of the necessity of Government inspection of unclassed ships. He had stated that the annual loss of seamen's lives was 2,000, and that in six years the annual loss approached to 12,000. It might safely be calculated that for each life lost at sea three persons were left destitute on shore, and thus if 2,000 seamen lost their lives, there were 6,000 persons dependent on them who were thrown destitute upon the world every year. Surely something should be done to put a stop to such an enormous sacrifice of human life. The noble Lord said he had no trust in Government inspection. On the other hand, the Member for Derby and those who supported him had no trust in dishonest shipowners. The hon. Member for Derby might congratulate himself on obtaining the advice and assistance of the hon. Member for Pembroke. He (Dr. Kenealy) had listened, on the other hand, with regret to the speech of the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. Shaw Lefevre), for he had appeared as the advocate of the shipowners; but if he (Dr. Kenealy) were a shipowner he would cry—"Save me from my friends, "for the hon. Member had loaded them with the greatest possible abuse and vituperation. He said the shipowners were so dishonest, so intent on gain, so determined on sending their unseaworthy ships to sea, no matter what loss of life might result, that they would do all in their power to evade Government inspection. He went further, for he said this Government inspection would be a cloak for ignorant, dishonest, and negligent shipowners. He (Dr. Kenealy) considered that as the strongest argument that could be advanced in favour of Mr. Plimsoll's Amendment. The hon. Member for Reading, however, did not stop there. He went on to say that the shipowners were so intent on gain, no matter by what abominable means, that if the Government surveyors went to inspect their vessels, they would "square" them. If he (Dr. Kenealy) were a shipowner in that House, so far from allowing such a statement to go unchallenged, he would use every energy of his heart and mind and soul to carry Mr. Plimsoll's Amendment sooner than allow such a terrible imputation to be cast upon him and upon his order. The hon. Member further told them he had formerly been connected with the Board of Trade, and what was the revelation he gave of that Department? He said that the Board of Trade was either so badly or so dishonestly served by its officers that he, from his own experience, would not trust it. He (Dr. Kenealy) did not believe these imputations. He believed that the Board of Trade was as well and honestly served as any public Department could be, and from what he had seen of the President of the Board he believed he was as honourably actuated by the desire to save human life and to preserve the honour and character of the Merchant Service as any man could possibly be. The fact was, that a more virulent and malignant reproach upon a public Department had never been made. The hon. Member said he had a profound distrust of the Board of Trade and of the proposed system of inspection. Whom then did he trust? Surely not the shipowners, for he had described them in the most satirical and abusive language. It was high time Parliament should interfere on behalf of the seamen. There were two parties concerned—the enormous capitalists who wished to take proper precautions for the safety of their ships, and a certain, small, miserable, and wicked section of shipowners who competed unfairly for business and who sent ships to sea that were admittedly unseaworthy. He believed that about 5, 000 seamen were annually sent to sea in unseaworthy vessels from British ports, that great loss of time was the consequence, and that it was imperatively necessary that such an abominable system should be put a stop to by legislation. He trusted the Chancellor of the Exchequer would seriously consider the matter, and think of the terrible guilt which the House would incur, if it did not interfere to save our seamen from the cupidity of these men. The hon. Member for Reading had said that if the Amendment passed the owners of ships would be in a worse position than the owners of mines, for that an Inspector of Mines could not make an examination of a mine unless he had special information as to its condition. That was not so. The Mine Inspector could make an investigation whenever he thought proper, and why should not the shipowner be placed in the same position as the mine owner? [Mr. Assheton Cross: Hear, hear!] Railway directors were liable to pay compensation if they were negligent and an accident occurred; but when a ship went down, with 20 or 30 sailors on board, no one could tell the cause, and those who were aggrieved were without remedy. It was asserted last year by the hon. Member for Hull (Mr. Norwood) that in many cases shipowners were ignorant of the value of their ships. They might depend upon it that all shipowners knew the value and the seaworthiness of their ships. He therefore could not understand why a shipowner should object to obtain a certificate of seaworthiness. Where was the hardship of such a course? Who could know the value of a ship so well as the owner? [The Chancellor of the Exchequer: Hear, hear!] The Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed pleased that he (Dr. Kenealy) admitted that; but he maintained that no man who was sending his ship to sea in a fit condition would object to have his ship surveyed; but the dishonest man, who knew that his ship was unseaworthy, and that if she were lost he would secure the money for which he had insured her, he would object, and strongly, to all survey and inspection. He did not believe that such men would be able "to square" the Inspectors—he believed that meant to bribe them; and if men amenable to that influence should happen to be in the service of the Board of Trade, he was sure that the President of that Board, in whom he had every confidence, would very soon get rid of them. They ought, by their legislation, to render such proceedings impossible, and he hoped, therefore, for the sake of the character of the country, the Amendment would be adopted.

said, he rose to support the Amendment of the hon. Member for Derby. It was rather difficult, however, for any hon. Member to show much confidence in debating in favour of the Amendment, when it was characterized by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade as "infatuated folly. "He should share the distress and sorrow with which the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. E. J. Reed) heard the President of the Board of Trade declare that the passing of the Amendment would be fatal to the Bill and the commercial interests of the country, if he was not aware that strong statements on the part of the right hon. Gentleman and the Government often preceded large concessions. He hoped after the opinion of the House had been fully expressed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would announce that it was a subject worthy of consideration, and that some compromise would be come to which would meet the wishes of the House and the country. He had listened to his right hon. Friend (Sir Charles Adderley) with a desire to be instructed, but the effect produced on his mind by his arguments was, that he had proved a great deal too much. If the Government certificate would diminish the care of the shipowner, why had the law been allowed to remain for many years past that all passenger ships should have certificates? If it was disadvantageous to passenger steamers, and did not ensure the safety of the passengers, why was not the Act repealed? The right hon. Gentleman said—and he (Mr. Gorst) was really distressed to hear the reason—that it was necessary in the case of passenger steamers as a character, because lands men required the protection of the Government; and if that were so, seamen required it ten-fold more, because whilst a passenger could choose whether he went to sea or not, a seaman was compelled by the present law to go to sea and sail in the ship on pain of imprisonment. They must, for the sake of consistency, either give up the survey of passenger steamers in the interest of the passengers, or they must allow the survey of all sea-going ships in the interest of the seamen. The charge made against the hon. Member for Derby of having changed his proposition with regard to the mode of classification, did not come with a good grace from the Government, seeing how much they had changed with respect to grain cargoes and deck-loads. It also appeared there would not be much difficulty in carrying out classification, because the number of ships that were not classified at Lloyd's, at Liverpool, and other ports, was about 3,000. He was surprised to hear the right hon. Gentleman say that by a system of Government classification an end would be put to Lloyd's, and that the Government would have to survey all the ships in the country. The Government was not required to give a high-class certificate, but such a character as would just allow a ship to go to sea, leaving it to the underwriters to say whether they would insure such ships at the same high rates as they did ships in the best class at Lloyd's. Again, the right hon. Gentleman seemed to suppose that the certificate of the Department must be given gratis, whereas he had nothing to do in order to prevent that result but to exact a sufficiently high fee, and then in neither case would there be any risk of the Government certificate being so greatly in demand as to supersede the classification at Lloyd's. The Government survey would not be applicable to new ships, or first-class ships, but only to those which had gone off their class at Lloyd's, and were in a dilapidated and questionable condition. He, therefore, did not think that the survey of a few thousand ships would be likely to impede the progress of naval science. He hoped the question would be seriously considered by the Committee, discussed on its merits, and decided accordingly, and not by a Party vote, in which case it would be no more fatal to the commercial interests of the country than it would be to the Bill.

As this Amendment raises one of the two main questions referred to the Royal Commission, I wish to explain why I cannot vote with the hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby, whose humane exertions on behalf of our seamen I appreciate highly. The Commission made two Reports on this subject, in both of which they laid special stress on the fact that the Act of 1873 was of so new and tentative a character, that it was impossible to pronounce a definite opinion, as to the effect it would ultimately produce in preventing unseaworthy ships from being sent to sea. I advert to this point at the outset of my observations; because I, for one, should not have been prepared to sign the Report of the Commission, unless I had anticipated that, under vigorous administration, the Act of 1873 would produce all the results, that could be expected from the proposals of the hon. Member for Derby. The evidence taken by the Commission was most conflicting, the witnesses generally inclining to those remedial measures, with which their own personal experience made them most familiar. All the surveyors were in favour of Government surveys. All the officials connected with Lloyd's and other similar institutions, in an administrative capacity, were against surveys. For my own part, I entertain the conviction that the practical difficulty of a survey by the Government of unclassed ships has been much exaggerated. The number of vessels to be dealt with would be comparatively limited, and, if necessary, the assistance of Lloyd's surveyors could be obtained. I am equally convinced, by our experience of the Act of 1873, that the power of complaint, which has been given to the seamen is of no practical value. These are considerations which incline my judgment in favour of the proposals of the hon. Member for Derby. On the other hand, I think it a most serious innovation for the Government to give certificates of seaworthiness, and thus to become directly responsible for the safety of any ship, not good enough to class at Lloyd's. In practice, I believe that there would be little difference between the system proposed by Mr. Plimsoll and the vigorous supervision, now carried out by the Government. The hon. Member for Derby says that the Government should survey all unclassed ships. Practically the Board of Trade survey these ships under the existing regulations. Mr. Gray told the Commission that he knew that ships were sent to sea which ought not to be sent to sea; and he asked for power to break up an unseaworthy ship. He believed in a survey of suspicious cases, and in the punishment of men, who disregarded the life of the sailor. What he wanted was legislation, which would help them to bring home punishment to the offender. That was the language of Mr. Gray in 1873. And what did he say in 1874? He was asked by the Duke of Somerset the following Question:—

"We were told last year by Mr. Farrer, or by yourself, that you knew pretty well, throughout the country, where the bad and unseaworthy ships were, and that all you wanted was power, in order to lay your hand upon them." "Yes;" he replied, "I said so; and my experience in the working of the Act of 1873 has satisfied me that the Act, as it now stands, is sufficient for the purposes of the Board of Trade, in preventing unseaworthy ships from being sent to sea. I should be sorry to see any further power given to the Board of Trade to interfere with the shipping of the country."

If the Act of 1873 had been administered from the first with the vigour, to which the Board stood pledged by the statements, made on their behalf by Mr. Gray, I do not believe that the temporary Act passed last Session, or the Bill we are now discussing, would have been introduced to Parliament. Both the Board of Trade and the hon. Member for Derby agree that all unseaworthy ships should be stopped by the Government; but the Board of Trade object to give certificates, while the hon. Member for Derby says that all ships, which are not unseaworthy, should be certificated. For the security of the ship owner, I should prefer the system of Government certificates. For the security of life, I should object to them. Unclassed ships are of two kinds. They are either in such high repute with shipowners, that they can be insured at the most favourable rates; or they belong to poor men, who cannot afford, or to negligent or unscrupulous people, who are unwilling, to pay the cost of proper repairs. The powers of the Board of Trade, under the Act of 1873, ought to have been, and, I believe, after too long a delay in the commencement of operations, are now brought to bear on these inferior ships. The result must be that all vessels will be kept in sufficient repair to class at Lloyd's, or else they will be broken up. If these anticipations are fulfilled, would it not be better that shipowners should protect themselves by classing their ships, rather than seek to obtain a Government certificate, which will relieve them of further responsibility? I object to relieve a shipowner of the highest standing from responsibility; but I object still more to relieve from responsibility struggling or unscrupulous people, who, instead of making an effort to keep their ships seaworthy, will use all their cunning to hide defects, and to obtain certificates at the smallest possible expense. If such a system as this be introduced, the seaworthiness of the inferior ships will depend entirely on the vigilance of the surveyors; and we have no reason to suppose they will not sometimes make a mistake. Surveyors are not infallible. A few ships are now lost from the carelessness of their owners. Under the proposed rules, a few ships will be lost from the carelessness of surveyors. But, whereas now, when an uncertified ship is lost, the shipowner is responsible, he will be held blameless in every case of disaster to a ship certified by the Government. The hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. E. J. Reed) has adduced the Government inspection of railways, as an argument in favour of the proposal of the hon. Member for Derby. My railway experience has taught me a very different lesson. If we had trusted to minute Government inspection, rather than to the effect of liability to pay heavy damages in case of accident, the safety of the travelling public would not have been so well secured as under the system actually adopted. I entertain no sanguine belief in the possibility of increasing the safety of life at sea by further legislation. We do not want legislation so much as good administration of the laws we have lately passed, and under which such ample powers have been already entrusted to the Government. I was greatly impressed by the strong opinion on this subject, expressed to the Royal Commission by Mr. Burns, the leading proprietor in the Cunard line. He told us that, in his opinion, there had been too much interference of late by Act of Parliament, and that that interference had had no effect in diminishing loss of life at sea. Such an opinion deserves the respectful attention of this House, coming as it does from the owner of a fleet of steamers, which have made nearly 3, 000 passages across the Atlantic, and whose happy fortune it has been never to lose a life entrusted to his care. In conclusion, I desire to express my conviction that the general condition of our shipping does great honour to this country. The success of our shipowners, in competition with the whole world, affords the best proof of the quality of their ships. And, spending, as I do, no inconsiderable part of my life afloat, and comparing the shipping of the present day with my recollections of 20 years ago, I see a progressive development of speed, power, and safety, which I should hesitate to interrupt by novel legislation, which, however, laudable in intention, I believe to be framed on a total misconception of the proper functions of a Government Department.

begged to say that he would give his hearty support to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Derby, which he believed to be a good one, and one which would afford an additional security against the loss of life and property at sea. Some of the hon. Members who had addressed the Committee had raised several false issues. In this case the choice was not between prevention and cure, but, as the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Charles Adderley) had said, a choice between two modes of prevention, and he (Mr. Watkin Williams) claimed both of them. Was there any choice between a survey on the one hand and a certificate on the other? He could see none, and he claimed the protection of both for the seamen. He quite admitted that any interference with trade was objectionable, but here the ordinary rules of political economy fell into abeyance, inasmuch as the conduct of the shipowners themselves drove the Government or some other body to exercise an interference of the kind. But apart from that, he found that the highest class of shipowners not only submitted to a survey, but actually courted it; and, under such circumstances, it was too much to say that the other owners should not be compelled to submit to it. It was said there was a great difficulty as regarded the efficiency of survey, but his answer to that was simply this—that the certificate given by a system of legislation, although imperfect and far from complete, would yet be good to a certain extent. There was no doubt as to the possibility of having such a survey as would prevent rotten ships from being sent to sea. He denied that the proposed certificate was to exonerate the shipowner from all responsibility. In the whole course of his experience as a lawyer he had never heard of a Lloyd's certificate being considered as a guarantee that the ship was seaworthy. What he meant was this, that the certificate was only a guarantee that at the time the ship was surveyed, she was entitled to be classed A 1 for so many years; but when she was loaded and sent to sea the owner had the full responsibility outside the certificate altogether. But the proposed certificate was of a very different kind. It had been suggested that if they introduced a Government examination, so to speak, or a Government certificate, the effect would be to reduce the standard of unseaworthiness; but he believed that was a great exaggeration, because it would very soon be discovered that the Government examinations would be "pass examinations, "like that of the Universities, and nothing more. An attorney or a surgeon could not rely on his certificate to clear him of negligence, and the Government certificate would not, or, at any rate, ought not, to be of any more avail to the shipowner. Certainly the certificate would not be a perfect, absolute, and complete security; but it would be to some extent a security, and would prevent shipowners sending sailors to sea in rotten vessels that could not be regarded in any other light than as coffins. The objection that the effect of Government granting certificates would be to reduce the standard of efficiency was one that was generally exaggerated; but, at all events, the certificate desired by the hon. Member for Derby was only in the nature of a check that shipowners should not send their ships to sea in an unfit state.

said, he thought there had been some misapprehension on the part of the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. E. J. Reed) and the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll) as to the charges of inconsistency they had brought against the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade. He (Mr. Norwood) thought it arose from a misapprehension on the part of the hon. Gentlemen of the real scope of the Bill and the principle involved in the Amendment. Had this been merely a question of the convenience and advantage of shipowners, he should no doubt have been disposed to support the Amendment of the hon. Member for Derby, as shipowners had been told it was their interest to do; but he had yet to learn that it was proper for a Member of that House to allow himself to be influenced, in giving his vote or advice, by private interest or prejudices affecting any particular class. He wished to say what he believed was for the benefit of the country, and to legislate as far as possible in the interest of saving life. There were two principles on which such legislation could be carried on. There was the principle laid down in the Bill of the Government which had been acted on for some years by the previous Government; and there was the principle laid down by the hon. Member for Derby. The Government said—"We do not determine how a ship is to be manned and stowed, but we hold the owner responsible for the mode in which he carries on his business with reference to losses of life and property." But the Government went one step further and said—"There are a certain number of inefficient ships at sea, and with reference to them, it is our duty to establish a sort of police, and if our surveyors report to us that a ship is in such bad repair or that sheis so overloaded that the lives of those who sail in her will be placed in jeopardy, we take power to ourselves to arrest her, compel her to be properly loaded, and, if necessary, even break her up." The hon. Member for Derby, however, went upon an en- tirely different principle—which he described as that of prevention, requiring every British ship to possess a certificate of her seaworthiness to be issued by the Government or by some register societies before she was to be permitted to sail. In a subsequent Amendment the hon. Member dealt in like manner with the stowage of a ship, so that the Government was to be made answerable for everything done by the shipowner. If the principle of the hon. Member were to be carried out to the logical result a complete system of surveillance over a shipowner's business from beginning to end must be adopted. That was an exceedingly dangerous principle and one which the Government must not and dare not carry into execution. Did the hon. Member for Derby expect the Government to guarantee the seaworthiness of every British ship which left port? [Mr. PLIMSOLL: No.] It was all very well for the hon. Member to say "No;" but that would be the natural result of his Amendment, under which no British ship was to sail without having a certificate from the Government or from one of the societies. The inevitable result of the adoption of the principle advocated by the hon. Member would be that a false security would be induced, and the minimum requirements of the Government would become the maximum efficiency necessary in the estimation of the shipowner, who would never go beyond the very letter of the law laid down by the Government. The hon. and learned Member for Denbigh (Mr. Watkin Williams) said that the Government certificate would by no means relieve the shipowner from his responsibility, but would any man of common sense make such a statement seriously? The shipowner would act up to the letter of the law. And what would become of an action against a shipowner for unseaworthiness of his vessel, if he could prove that he had fulfilled to the letter everything which the law made incumbent upon him? He doubted whether the eloquence even of the hon. and learned Member would induce a jury in the City of London to give damages in such a case. The hon. Member for Derby had laid great stress upon the fact that the rate of insurance upon many unclassed ships was higher than upon classed ships. The hon. Member was undoubtedly correct in that statement, but he appeared to forget that these unclassed ships performed very necessary functions, and that they might be called the "costermongers of commerce," seeing that they had to carry coal, iron, wood, and other coarse cargoes as they plied along our coasts, while at the same time they had to prosecute very difficult and intricate navigation. It would be absurd to put the highest class of ships to do such work as that. The hon. Member had omitted to state that although the number of unclassed ships lost was larger than that of classed ships, the loss of life by the latter was greater than that by the former. The hon. Member had referred to the survey by the Board of Trade of passenger vessels; but in his (Mr. Norwood's) opinion that survey often did as much harm as good. He had himself held a certificate from one of the Register Societies and from the Board of Trade that of one his steamers was fit to carry passengers, and although she was really quite unseaworthy, he might have sent hundreds of passengers to sea in her with impunity because he possessed that certificate. It must also be remembered that while passengers were landsmen who knew nothing whatever about ships, sailors were experts who could tell with a very slight examination whether a vessel was fit to go to sea or not; and he objected to that sort of grand motherly legislation that encouraged sailors to abstain from bringing their judgment into play when choosing their ships. He objected, on principle, to the Government giving certificates, and he further objected to the proposal of the hon. Member for Derby to exempt from the Government survey all vessels now classed at Lloyd's or at Liverpool, because he thought the exemptions proposed were very delusive. Why did the hon. Member exempt vessels registered at Lloyd's? That register simply signified that the vessel was built in a certain year, and that she then received a certain classification, and when she was last surveyed; but it showed nothing as to the existing state of the ship. What was wanted to be known was the seaworthiness of the ship at the time she commenced each voyage. What right had that House to throw upon a private body the responsibility of controlling the Mercantile Marine which should be exercised by Government alone? Lloyd's comprised a number of underwriters, merchants, and shipowners; but it had what might be described as a "hole-and-corner" constitution, and the members were paid for their services. He doubted whether Lloyd's could possibly perform the business it was proposed to throw upon them, as their duties were of a distinctly different mercantile character. There were between 25, 000 and 26, 000 British registered ships, 9, 100 of which were classed at Lloyd's, and 900 at Liverpool; so that there were only 10, 000 classed ships. The hon. Member for Derby was ready to omit vessels under 100 tons. But why should they be omitted? Surely, if legislation was required for saving life in large vessels, it was required for saving life in small vessels. He believed there were between 15, 000 and 16, 000 vessels which were not classed either at Lloyd's or in the Liverpool Book. The work, therefore, was not so light as might be imagined, and it would not be right to throw this enormous additional work upon these private societies, and if all vessels were forced to submit to the severe ordeal of being classed at Lloyd's, between 4, 000 and 5, 000 coasting vessels, which were well fitted for the work they were engaged in, would have to be broken up. But our colliers were as necessary as our Cunarders, for humble as well as important duties had to be performed by the Mercantile Marine. Reference had been made that in Canada great consternation existed at these proposals, and the Canadians said—"If you persist in your sensational and extreme legislation we shall decline to be bound by it, and shall demand to be treated as foreigners. "There was great exaggeration in many of the statements made as to unseaworthy ships, and the House should be extremely cautious in receiving stories of this character. Mr. Lindsay had, no doubt, had great experience as a shipmaster and shipowner, and his opinion was entitled to respect; but he had retired from business, and his knowledge dated back 20 years, since which great changes had occurred. He did not speak as a shipowner, or in the interest merely of shipowners, when he declared that a greater error than to follow the legislation of the hon. Member for Derby could not be made, and that the results would be disastrous. The lines laid down by the Government in the present Bill were the only wise and correct policy. He confessed, however, he shared the apprehensions that had been expressed as to the danger in the multiplication of a great army of officials; and he saw great danger in virtually handing over the Mercantile Marine of the country to irresponsible bodies like the Register Societies in London and Liverpool, who might lay down any amount of regulations to destroy the merchant shipping of this country. Believing that the legislation proposed by the hon. Member for Derby was vicious in principle, and would be disastrous in practice, he should give his vote against it.

said, that he, like the majority of the Committee, was without technical knowledge of the subject, yet the matter was so important that he, like the majority of other hon. Members, had felt it his duty to look into the facts and principles, and to come to some opinion upon the subject. The Committee could not be led by the experts, because they did not at all agree with each other, therefore he had formed his own opinion upon it, and it was adverse to the proposition of the Government. He was sorry to hear some of the remarks which had proceeded from the Treasury bench, because it was rather early in the debate on this Bill to pledge the Government against this Amendment, and to treat it as if the fate of the Bill depended upon it. Although this was not a Party measure, yet, taking the House constituted as it was, it usually happened that when a Minister declared that the fate of a Bill depended upon an Amendment Members sitting on the Government benches would naturally think that they ought to vote against it, whatever might happen. The question before the Committee was not only very important but very difficult to answer—namely, how best to prevent unseaworthy ships from going to sea. He agreed that they must not be too sanguine as to the result of their legislation on this subject. The winds and waves would be always difficult to contend against, and nothing that Parliament could do would make a seafaring life safe and easy. Parliament might, however, take care that ships went to sea in a decently seaworthy state. That being their object, on what points were they agreed? They were all agreed that there was a great and positive danger arising from ships leaving port and going to sea in an unseaworthy state. That danger might be expected to exist. Ships were not immortal. They might be built well, but they passed from one owner to another until, in time, they became worn out, and in a state in which they were very likely to go to the bottom. Many were too bad to repair, and there were others the repair of which would cost more than their value. It was these ships they wanted to prevent going out. What Parliament had to do was to see that the former were broken up and that those which required repairs did not go to sea until they were put into a state of repair. It was not necessary to jump at a conclusion unfavourable in all cases to the owners. They might be supposed to have an unconscious bias in favour of their ships, and allowance should be made for that, for having bought them from other people with hard money and having sailed them for two or three years, they might think they might be safely sent out for another year or so. There were at present 2,654 ships in the disclassed list of Lloyd's above 80 tons, and the description given of these ships in that list was very significant. They were called ships "whose characters are withdrawn or expired" with a blank as to the date of the last survey. No doubt, all were agreed ships of that suspicious character required the careful consideration of the Committee. It was no longer said that it was safe to rely upon public opinion—although there could be no doubt it had been much stimulated by the course taken by the hon. Member for Derby—or that legislation of this kind was an interference with the true principle of trade. That mode of argument was given up when Parliament began to legislate on this subject, and when it once interfered between the able-bodied seaman and the owner to whom he engaged himself. It was urged by the hon. Member for Hull (Mr. Norwood) that sailors knew what they were about; but he (Mr. Forster) and those who thought with him felt that whatever might be the general principles on which adult men were dealt with, such was the peculiar position of the sailor that he must be protected from himself. There was, indeed, a general agreement among hon. Members up to the point that legislation was necessary to prevent not merely the wilful ship owner, but also the careless and ignorant one from sending an unseaworthy vessel to sea. With regard to the former class the Amendment of the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Mac Iver) had been withdrawn a night or two ago, because it was believed it would have the effect of making the clause a dead letter. Under those circumstances, the Government came forward with a proposal by which they threw the responsibility on the shipowner, and by which they sought to stimulate knowledge and secure the exercise of care on his part. His hon. Friend the Member for Derby, on the other hand, would much prefer to rely upon a compulsory survey, which would ensure that certain conditions should be fulfilled. That was the alternative which had to be decided, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade would allow the Committee to decide it upon its own merits, and not attempt to influence them by any fear of the Government losing an important Bill. The clause proposed by the right hon. Gentleman seemed to him to be unable to prevent these 2,600 unseaworthy ships being afloat, and therefore he supported the Motion of the hon. Member for Derby. The matter, however, was not an easy one, and there was, he admitted, a good deal to be said on both sides. He must, however, observe that, looking with the utmost impartiality on the clause of the Government, he could not help being of opinion that it would not work, and for the reason that it was either unjust, or would turnout to be ineffectual. It was, he believed, unjust because there was many a shipowner who was unconsciously biassed in favour of his ship, and whom it would be a very strong act indeed to convict of a misdemeanour, and yet if he were to send his ship to sea life might be lost. Again, the clause, he maintained, would be ineffectual, and he should like to know who was to be the judge as to whether "reasonable means" had been used to send a vessel to sea in a seaworthy state? It was a question which must be decided by the jury, and he very much doubted whether, in 99 cases out of 100, except where extreme turpitude was proved to exist, the jury would not take the man's own reasons as theirs rather than convict him of a criminal offence. It was only within the last few months, and then only through the manifestation of public opinion strongly shown, he might add, that there had been those three convictions which had been spoken of in extreme cases, and he did not anticipate that anything like that would be the general result of the proposed legislation. Against such convictions must be set, in his opinion, the feeling which seemed to be excited in the minds of such men as Mr. Justice Brett, for if charges like his were often heard, it would be exceedingly difficult to secure convictions under the law. It might be said by the Government that they would rely on their army of Inspectors, which would detain ships which were not seaworthy, but he had an idea that the fear of the Board of Trade with respect to incurring costs would be something like that of the shipowner with regard to his liability to punishment. But leaving the proposal of the Government he came to that of his hon. Friend the Member for Derby, which seemed to him to have these two advantages—that there was nothing unjust in it, and that it purported, at any rate, to be complete. His hon. Friend would provide for a survey of all ships, so that when they set out on a voyage there would be a security that they were in a seaworthy condition. The main argument against that was, that the thing was impossible. His hon. Friend the Member for Hull asked if such a two penny-halfpenny society as Lloyd's was to be acknowledged. All he (Mr. Forster) could say in reply was that it was a very remarkable twopenny-halfpenny society, for he was informed that out of 11, 500 British ships afloat above 100 tons, more than 6, 000 were classed at Lloyd's; and it appeared to him that if the Committee were to look back they would find circumstances which would enable them to rely very fairly on that voluntary society, which was established for the good of shipowners and underwriters, and in connection with the premiums charged on ships, and which it was absurd, therefore, to suppose could be abolished by any regulations which the right hon. Gentleman opposite could make in his Bill. The majority of the mercantile and shipowning classes in this country found it to their interest to rely upon Lloyd's survey and to make it as good as they could. Consequently, the survey of Lloyd's was a good survey, and the same remark was applicable no doubt to the Liverpool Association; while their respective surveyors were experienced practical men, whose surveys might be relied upon by Government. If the surveys and classification of Lloyd's were not reliable, there would soon be such an outcry against them as would result in a change in the system. The Government might, in his opinion, take their survey with comparative safety for the time it professed to last, for it should be remembered that it lasted for as many years as, according to the experience of the underwriters, it ought to last. It had been argued that the hon. Member for Derby's proposal would prevent improvements, and that our passenger surveys had prevented improvements already. If this were so, he could only say that there had been very little outcry upon the matter, and, as was said by the hon. and learned Member for Chatham (Mr. Gorst), the President of the Board of Trade ought to propose to do away with that survey, but he was perfectly aware he would do nothing of the kind. His hon. Friend the Member for Derby had alluded to a resolution passed by the Associated Chambers of Commerce. He (Mr. Forster) had looked at the speech of the gentleman who brought in that motion—Mr. Hall, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne—who, in advocating a survey, stated that the risks in some of the North-country clubs were so great that the insurances called for reached the enormous premium of 25 or 30 per cent. This showed that the members went on in the conviction that a club would be a paying business even if one out of every four ships insured went to the bottom. The only other objection he should notice was that respecting the transfer of ships to a foreign flag. Well, he would only say that if these old coffins were to be afloat at all, let them not be under our flag. The fact, however, was that other countries were preventing the transfer of such vessels, for he was told that France, Italy, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and Germany refused to accept the transfer of British ships without a certificate of seaworthiness. He was in favour of the Amendment, not because, as his hon. Friend stated, prevention was better than cure, but because he thought prevention better than punishment, especially when the fear of punishment was not operative to prevent the commission of the offence. In conclusion, he was informed that the Dominion Legislature were taking very active steps to prevent unseaworthy ships from going out, and therefore he agreed with the hon. Member for Hull that we ought not to attempt to legislate for the Canadians.

said, he was sorry to find himself at variance with his right hon. Friend the Member for Bradford. It was a pity the right hon. Gentleman had not consulted some of his Colleagues who had been connected with the Board of Trade. Had he done so, he would not have found any of them who had held the office of Secretary to the Board of Trade who would not agree with the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir Charles Adderley) and say that he would be disinclined for such legislation as that proposed by the hon. Member for Derby. His right hon. Friend (Mr. Forster) appeared to consider that all ships which were unclassed at Lloyd's were unseaworthy. That was a great mistake. The ships unclassed were vessels not intended for the Indian or American trade; but they were, as a rule, quite suited for the purpose for which they were intended. [Mr. W. E. Forster: I did not say that they were unseaworthy, but that they ought to be looked after.] That was what the Bill of the Government proposed to do. It was to enable them to look after those ships that they asked for the large powers given by the clause. His objection to the Amendment was two-fold—first, that it would substitute Government responsibility for that of the shipowner; and, secondly, that it would check improvement. It was said that you were applying the same sort of legislation to mines and railways. The fact was not so; but, even if it were, the circumstances were wholly different. Mines and railways were constantly at hand, and might be constantly under supervision; but when a ship left port, it was beyond Government control, and you had nothing to fall back on but the responsibility of the shipowner, which would be greatly weakened by this system of Government interference in one of the most complicated and difficult of trades. Then it was said that there was a Go- vernment survey of passenger ships. True, and the result of the increasing supervision was that, in constructing passenger vessels, attention was paid, not so much to what was thought best and safest, but to what would meet the requirements of the Government surveyor. He had been assured, indeed, that shipbuilders had been compelled by the Government regulations respecting passenger ships to do that which they knew was even dangerous. Originally this control was not so stringently carried out, but the effect of it was now increasingly injurious. In an able pamphlet by a gentleman connected with Lloyd's, it was stated that for the last 40 years Government supervision had done nothing for British shipping throughout the period of its greatest development. He (Mr. Rathbone) agreed with that opinion, but not with the further opinion of the author as to the great advantages of Lloyd's regulations, in accordance with which, it was said, nine-tenths of the ships in this country were built. This statement might have been true in the days of wooden ships, when they were built pretty nearly upon one model, and then Lloyd's rules did no harm. But since the days of iron these rules were found to be constantly in the way of improvement. The same remark applied to the rules of the Liverpool Registry. Shipowners soon came to disregard both and to build upon their own responsibility; and, so far from Lloyd's rules having controlled the progressive development of British shipbuilding, this development had occurred in spite of, and independent of, any system of registration whatever. The proposals of the hon. Member for Derby would be most serious in checking improvements in shipbuilding. They might not interfere with the large shipowners or builders who had amassed fortunes and could rest and be thankful. But there were many instances of men who had risen from the ranks—small builders of small ships—who would be stopped in their attempts at improvement. There was a danger, too, lest, as a result of vexatious interference by the Government, not only that rotten vessels would be transferred to foreign flags, but that all the difficult and dangerous trades would also be transferred, in which case they would be under no legislation whatever, and the danger to life would thereby be much increased. It was absolutely incorrect to say that similar legislation was already applied to mines, because we did not require the survey of every part of a mine before it was allowed to be worked. To do so in the case of ships would be to make the Government responsible; and, as had been said by the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. Shaw Lefevre), to give a charter of indemnity to the careless shipowner.

said, if it were possible by legislation to prevent unseaworthy ships from going to sea it would be very desirable to legislate so as to do it. The great question, however, was, could it be done? What he feared was, that in making the attempt they would run a risk of drowning more than they saved. There were two propositions before the Committee; one contained in the Bill of the Government, and the other brought forward by the hon. Member for Derby, who, taking the greater part of an important clause in the Government Bill, would add something to it. That something, no doubt, would harass and inflict considerable trouble on that portion of our shipping which most wanted care and fostering—namely, the small coasting vessels of this country. They would form by far the largest porportion of vessels that would come under the proposition of the hon. Member for Derby, as they were almost wholly unclassed. The Amendment would impose upon them great trouble and difficulty and expense, which they could ill afford, because with the sharp competition now going on between the coasters and the railways that expense, though little, would very likely turn the scale in favour of the railways and drive a great many of these small vessels out of the trade. Then as to the question of responsibility, he did not think any body of men could be more anxious or more responsible than the naval authorities of this country; but within the last few years a few curious things had happened under their auspices. Let the Committee take the case of the Megæra. She was fitted out by one dockyard, and afterwards transferred to another for examination. They reported that the bottom of the vessel was better than they expected, and she was sent to sea. Something, however, was wrong; certain other parts were found defective, the crew were made uncomfortable, and she went to a third dockyard from whence she was turned out apparently in a state fit to go a voyage. The old tin-kettle accordingly went to sea and came to grief, and then it was found she was not in such a condition as was supposed, it being found that not only was her bottom in holes, but that the metal was so weak that it would not bear tinkering. But according to at least two dockyard authorities she was seaworthy. Again, take the case of the Captain—was she seaworthy? If so, why did she go down with 500 people on board? Or the Monarch, a still more recent case, which went to sea with everything so beautifully arranged that the sluices to let out water let the water in. He would not say there was a panic—that could not be in a Queen's ship—but there was alarm and signals were made for help. The mistake, however, was found out and rectified; but supposing she had been out at sea with 500 emigrants—men, women, and children—on board and a small crew, the error might not have been found out, and she might have gone to the bottom. These were incidents which showed what risks there were which could not be foreseen, but which in merchant vessels might lead to shipowners being indicted for misdemeanour. He took those instances from the Navy, because there could be no mistake about the facts. It was now20 years since the Crimean War closed. The naval authorities said they could do nothing in the Baltic because they had no gunboats. However, the gunboats were ready when the war was over, and it became a question what should be done with them. One authority said they were not seaworthy and another that they were, and there was a Parliamentary inquiry to settle the matter, of which, unfortunately, he was a Member. There was no speculation about the matter, it must be understood, as there might be about a ship that was lost, for these gunboats were there laid up somewhere about Haslar, high and dry for inspection, and the officers who were sent to inspect them gave evidence point-blank in opposition to one another. The naval authorities were positive that they were unseaworthy, and the dockyard authorities that they were perfectly seaworthy. One distinguished naval officer said they were so rotten he could poke his umbrella into them. If, in such a case, when the vessels in question were not at sea, but open to every eye, competent witnesses—nay, experts—could make such statements, what chance of justice would a shipowner have if tried for misdemeanour? For his own part, he was so astonished at this conflict that he went down to Portsmouth to see the gunboats, and he found that, although there were little bits of sappy wood which were unsound, the timbers generally were quite sound, and indeed almost new. He mentioned the fact to show what curious evidence might be adduced to convict a man of misdemeanour. He objected also very strongly to the proposal of cross-examining an accused person against himself. Such a state of things ought to be well considered by the Law Officers of the Crown, or otherwise it might become a dangerous precedent. He saw no benefit to be derived by such a course at all commensurate with the evil that would be done if such a precedent was set up. On the whole, although not sanguine as to either, he preferred the Government proposal, because it was likely, he thought, to do some good, and it would not be attended with such injury to the coasting trade as the Amendment of the hon. Member for Derby. Speed was much more considered now-a-days than the safety of the crew, and hence long narrow vessels were built which easily succumbed to the fury of storms.

rose in support of the Amendment of the hon. Member for Derby, and, at the same time, wished to correct a statement of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade as to the out-put of coal in successive years and the annual loss of life in mines. The President of the Board of Trade had stated that the only result of the Mines Act had been to raise the price of coal—anything more incorrect than that could not have been stated—the truth was that when the output of coal before 1850 was under 60,000,000 tons per annum, now they had a production of over 127,000,000, and the death-rate from accidents had not increased; everything was changed for the better recently. If they had not had an efficient system of inspection he had no doubt that instead of only 1,000 lives being lost last year, there would have been 4,000. The Inspection had, in fact, saved thousands of lives, and he hoped that the system would be still further extended.

contended that the clause was opposed to the whole spirit of our constitutional law, and that it proposed to invert the presumption of law by saying that a shipowner should be guilty until he proved himself innocent, and that in that respect it ought to be clearly distinguished from the Amendment, which went on the lines of our old liberties, and would substitute for the proposed innovation the prohibition of an improper act. The clause would allow a coffin ship to ply her trade at the peril of conviction if she should be found out; but what they wanted was to prevent unseaworthy ships being sent to sea. There was an invidious severity in the plan proposed by the Government as contrasted with the proposal of the hon. Member for Derby, which was one of general protection; and he protested against the course which had been pursued by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade in threatening that the Bill would be withdrawn if the Amendment of the hon. Member for Derby were adopted.

explained that what he had said was that the Bill was drawn upon one principle and the Amendment upon another, and therefore it must fall, if the other was carried.

said, that was a correction in which nothing was corrected, and meant that the Bill of the Government must fall if the Amendment were carried, and that was raising a Government issue as he had said. But the arguments of the Government assumed a position which they meant to abandon immediately the Amendment was negatived; they would turn right about and propose to manacle the shipowning interest by penal legislation. The country would revolt against such a clause coming into operation, and no British jury would convict under it. They were asked to fetter this trade in a manner that no other trade was fettered in this country. He therefore hoped the spirit of it would be repugnant to the Committee, for if there were facts to justify such an innovation they more than proved the case of the hon. Member for Derby. With regard to inspection, the Government could not believe in the alleged evils of that system, or they would not adopt it in the case of troop-ships and emigrant ships. The words "reasonable means" in the clause he must characterize as undefined and elastic, and he contended that it was certain not to operate because there would be no particular data on which to go as to the state in which a ship happened to be sent to sea. A vessel might go down on her voyage, and would a British jury, he should like to know, on the word of a seaman condemn a Liverpool shipowner unless it was proved that she was in an unseaworthy condition when she set out? If the clause were meant to be a reality, it would be too severe, and it had been submitted to the House with the appearance of severity, although he had a strong suspicion that it could never come into force, a view in which he was supported by the hon. Member for Birkenhead. The history of ships was one of continually passing from hand to hand, reminding him of the case of the Irish girl who, finding that her fine dress was dragging her down to Satan, passed it onto her younger sister. The high-class shipowners were not likely to be affected by the Bill, because after a few years, and before anything could happen to reflect upon their character, they sold their ships, and they passed down from class to class until they reached that point when the Government should step in and, with the supporters of this Amendment, say that they should no longer go to sea to be traps and snares for precious human lives.

said, that the Committee had spent nearly the whole of the working hours of the evening in discussing the Amendment of the hon. Member for Derby, and, although the time spent in the discussion had been considerable, no one who had listened to it would say it was too long for the importance of the subject. The Amendment, although it appeared to be a question of introducing only two or three lines into one of the clauses of a Bill, did in fact challenge, and was antagonistic to, the whole principle on which the Government had framed their measure, and set up in its place the principle of legislation on which the hon. Member for Derby desired to proceed. No one could doubt that the hon. Member who had given such earnest and able labour to this question, and who had made it so very much his own, was entitled to put forward the views he entertained. On the other hand, it was not a question to be settled upon authority, but by reasoning, and the Committee must not be led away by the fact that the hon. Member for Derby attached great weight to his Amendment, but must look to the whole position of the case, and must take into consideration the alternative plans. It was desirable, before the Committee went to a division, that hon. Members should dismiss from their minds the points that were beside the question. There were many points upon which all were agreed—such as the importance of legislation for the protection of the lives of our seamen. No one could doubt that that was an object of the highest importance, and it was as dear to the Government as to the hon. Member for Derby. Then there was another point upon which there ought to be a clear understanding. Exception had been taken to the rather strong terms in which the President of the Board of Trade had spoken of the absolute impossibility of the Government accepting the proposals of the hon. Member for Derby. It had been alleged that that statement had given something of a Party character to the discussion, and was calculated to induce Members sitting on the Ministerial side of the House to support the measure as a Government Bill. He wished to disclaim, on the part of his right hon. Friend and the Government, any such meaning or intention. The question had been argued on both sides in a very clear and able manner. There were hon. Gentlemen on the Government side who objected to their proposals, while there were hon. Members opposite who objected to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Derby. Beside that consideration, the mode of dealing with the question now proposed was not peculiar to the present Government. It had been adopted and gradually elaborated in the legislation of several years past by the past and preceding Governments, nor had it been dealt with in any sense as a Party question. He could assure the hon. Member for Derby and his Friends that during the whole of the Recess, and, indeed, for a longer period, the Bill had engaged the very serious and impartial consideration of the Government, and the proposal they had made was, they believed, that best suited to attain the object they all had in view. It appeared that some confusion had prevailed as to what was really proposed by the hon. Member for Derby; and he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) had hoped that the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Sullivan) was about to take the Committee out of that confusion; but the infectious character of the air upon the bench upon which the hon. Member had been sitting had not left him unscathed, and he had fallen into the same error as previous speakers as to what was the real point at issue. He told the Committee that his hon. Friend the Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll) was merely going to introduce certain words to provide that no ship was to go to sea except under certain circumstances, and that the Amendment left everything else blank. Now, the Committee had not spent the whole evening in discussing the propriety of introducing merely a few introductory words into a clause. The Committee must take the general plan of the hon. Member for Derby as it stood on the Paper, and regard it as an alternative plan to that of the Government. He was surprised at the construction which the hon. and learned Member for the Denbigh Boroughs (Mr. Watkin Williams) put upon the question. He wanted to take both modes of prevention. The hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. E. J. Reed) said to the shipowners on his side of the House—"The hon. Member for Derby is going to chastise you with whips, but the Government are going to chastise you with scorpions. "The hon. and learned Member for the Denbigh Boroughs, however, would chastise them with both. If the clause were amended, as the hon. and learned Member for Denbigh suggested, the shipowner would still be guilty of misdemeanour if, from any cause, he went to sea without a certificate. However, the real point was this—to which of the two kinds of prevention were they to trust? And here they found that the hon. Member for Stoke-upon-Trent (Dr. Kenealy) bore an unconscious kind of testimony in favour of the Government proposal, for he said—how he arrived at it it was difficult to say—"Who can know the value of a ship better than the shipowner?" There was the whole statement of the case of the Government. They declared that unseaworthy ships should not be sent to sea, and they had to find out how to prevent unseaworthy ships being sent out. The Government said the responsibility ought to be put on the men who were best able to prevent an unseaworthy ship going to sea—the owner. Who knew better than the shipowner whether his ship was unseaworthy? Some hon. Members opposite said a great many shipowners were not competent to say whether a ship was seaworthy; but if the responsibility for the ship going to sea in an unseaworthy state rested upon him, he would take care to have her properly examined by qualified persons. If he did that, he would relieve himself of the responsibility otherwise attaching to him. The Bill did not, as the hon. Member for Louth said, invert the process of criminal law by holding a man guilty until he proved his innocence, because it defined the offence, and they must prove that a man sent, or attempted to send, an unseaworthy ship to sea before he could be convicted of a misdemeanour; and then they would give him the privilege, not enjoyed by other persons, of proving that he had taken reasonable precautions. It did not seem to him, therefore, that there was anything in the clause which could be said to invert the ordinary principles of law; but if there should be, it could be discussed at the proper time. He was sorry to find the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford bringing his great authority and calm judgment to bear against the proposal of the Government; for he believed that although he had doubtless arrived at a conclusion by an independent course of reasoning, the right hon. Gentleman was wrong. The right hon. Gentleman admitted that he would not require the Government to certify to the fitness of every ship going to sea, if it were not for the voluntary bodies such as Lloyd's. Yet let them notice the position in which the hon. Member for Derby was going to place these voluntary bodies. He would allow a ship classed at Lloyd's to go to sea, without reference to the time at which the classification was made. It had been insisted that certificates might be granted too hastily, and therefore the hon. Member for Derby was forced to a Proviso that the voluntary bodies who granted them should really be under the control of the Government, so that the responsibility would be really, after all, placed upon the Government. It really should be considered whether it would be right that the responsibility should be placed upon the Government Department, and whether that would be the best and safest way of arriving at the result. He confessed that it seemed to him that the step was one which would be fraught with so much danger that he earnestly counselled the Committee against being led away by a plausible and tempting proposal, which he believed to be fraught with great danger. This matter had been repeatedly considered with an anxious desire to arrive at the best settlement that could be arrived at, and hitherto they had shrunk from attempting that which he feared might lead to a lamentable failure. He could assure the Committee that the object on both sides was entirely and identically the same—that the object was to provide the best and least objectionable means to secure the safety of the lives of our seamen; and the Government were prepared at any time to discuss the question without any false pride or feeling, and if their views could be shown to be wrong they would be prepared to reconsider them. But having listened to the discussion he was confirmed in the view that the Government had taken of it. He trusted, then, that the Committee would support them in the view which they had taken, and that they might now be allowed to go to a division upon a question that had been most ably argued upon both sides, and with profit to the public, for they would see that there was no intention to set one interest against another, the simple question being what was the best and most unobjectionable means of attaining the object proposed.

expressed a hope that the next Amendment, which stood in the name of the hon. Member for Derby, would be disposed of, as the discussion had occupied eight hours.

said, he would take the opportunity of pointing out to the hon. Member for Derby that his second Amendment, which ought to have preceded the first, was informal as it then stood upon the Paper.

said, he would withdraw the second Amendment that stood in his name, accepting the decision of the Committee upon the first, as carrying with it the second.

complained that the Vote for the maintenance of criminal lunatics at Broadmoor was excessive.

explained that a part of the apparent excess was due to the construction of the prison, and stated that the whole question was under the consideration of a departmental Committee.

asked for explanations relative to the cancelling the appointment of Mr. Sheridan as clerk of the petty sessions for the Trim district, in the county of Meath, when his opponent, Mr. Darling, was about to be appointed by the Castle authorities in Dublin, though he had had a minority of votes. The precedent was a very bad one; the course taken being much resented in the locality, it being said the appointment was cancelled solely on religious grounds. He would move the rejection of the Vote.

said, he must disclaim entirely that any religious motive had intervened in the circumstances to which the hon. Member had referred. Three of the magistrates who voted for Mr. Sheridan were not qualified so to vote on account of insufficient attendance at petty sessions, and his opponent was consequently placed in a majority. He could not say that the resident magistrate had acted improperly in recording his vote on the occasion. The election was, in his opinion, properly conducted and properly decided in favour of Mr. Darling.

said, he must take exception to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman with regard to the disqualification of magistrates for voting at these elections in Ireland; as their duties were frequently conducted in such a way as to make their non-attendance much to be preferred to their attendance.

wanted to know when the rule, to which the right hon. Baronet referred the rejection of those magistrates votes, was made?