§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
§ THE EARL OF DUNMORE, in moving that the Bill be now read the second time, said, that the Chain Cables Act of 1864 required that all anchors made in in this country for the use of the merchant service should be subjected to what was known as the tensile strain. No anchors which were not up to that strain could be sold in this country. That Act expired on the 1st of July, 1872, and in the Session of 1871, a Bill was brought in having for its object, not only to perpetuate the clauses of that Act, but to make certain important additions to them. By the provisions of that Bill, which was now an Act of Parliament, there was another test besides the tensile strain applied to cables. The whole of the cable was subjected to that strain, but, in addition, there was a special and more severe test applied to five links in every 15 fathoms. An objection to the existing Act was this—that it prohibited any maker selling, even to a foreign shipowner, for use out of this country a cable not tested in our way; while some of those shipowners preferred other systems of testing, such, for instance, as the Dutch system which was applied at Amsterdam. The object of this Bill was to enable chain-cable makers to manufacture cables for the foreign market without subjecting them to the statutory test or any test applied in this country. The 3rd clause, therefore, 1617 confined the test to anchors and chain cables "for the use of any British ships," so that henceforward the foreign purchaser would have the option of having his chain cable tested according to our system, or having it tested elsewhere. The 6th clause repealed the section of the 34 & 35 Vict., which directed the nature and amount of the test, and substituted any test approved of by the Board of Trade as a test equal or superior to the existing tests.
§ Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a"—(The Earl of Dunmore.)
§ Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Thursday next.