HC Deb 07 July 1884 vol 290 cc348-67

Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment on Second Reading [19th May].

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Order be discharged."—(Lord Richard Grosvenor.)

MR. MACIVER

said, he hoped the House would not agree to this Motion. It appeared to him that the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Chamberlain) had behaved in a way which was altogether unworthy of an English statesman, or an English gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman had made use of the second reading of the Bill as a means of levelling charges against the whole ship-owning community; and now he proposed, by having the Order discharged, to evade the inquiry which he (Mr. MACIVER), in moving the rejection of the Bill, ventured to suggest ought to be held. What the President of the Board of Trade had said about a Royal Commission had really little to do with the immediate question now before the House. It was, unfortunately, only too true, as all who were conversant with shipping matters knew, that there was a good deal of preventible loss of life and property at sea. The right hon. Gentleman admitted that fully, and he produced a Bill dealing with the matter. He (Mr. MACIVER) believed at one time that the Bill was produced with a good and honest intention; to-day he doubted that it was. He thought the President of the Board of Trade would not have abandoned his Bill if he had really wished its subject-matter to be properly and fairly discussed. The suggestion that the Bill should be referred to a Select Committee was adopted by the whole of the Members of the shipping community, no matter to what political Party they belonged. If the right hon. Gentleman had agreed to what he knew to be the desire of all interested—of seamen and shipmasters, quite as much as of shipowners — the inquiry would have been going on during the weeks which had been wasted, and to-day the Bill would have stood before the House not as a Bill which could pass, but as one condemned as utterly useless for the purpose for which the right hon. Gentleman professed to have intended it. Perhaps the House was not aware how completely, and entirely, and hopelessly the Board of Trade had blundered, not alone in respect to this Bill, but in respect of the whole of its legislation during the last 13 or 14 years. The condemnation of the Board of Trade could not possibly have been stated more clearly than in Sir Thomas Farrer's own words. The words to which he (Mr. MACIVER) referred were used in a publication that was officially sent round the country last November. The obvious intention of that publication was to show some necessity for a change in the law, for Sir Thomas Farrer said that the true charge against the existing legislation was that it had failed to diminish the loss of life at sea. No condemnation of the doings of the Board of Trade for the last few years could be more complete. The very curious statement he had quoted was not one on which the Board of Trade could reasonably ask the House for a renewal of its confidence. The House knew well that in objecting to the Motion for the discharge of the Order for the second reading of the Bill he (Mr. MACIVER) did not support the Bill at all. In his opinion, nothing could be worse than the Bill. What he thought was that even to-day the President of the Board of Trade should refer his Bill to a Select Committee, who should inquire into the charges he had made against shipowners. The House remembered well that the President of the Board of Trade had spoken on more than one occasion of the preventible loss of life at sea. The right hon. Gentleman believed that much loss of life at sea was preventible; at all events, he had said so. He (Mr. MACIVER) believed it whether the right hon. Gentleman did or not. In his (Mr. MACIVER's) opinion, what ought to be done with this Bill was that it should be referred to practical people who understood the question. It would not take many Sittings of a Committee of practical men to knock the bottom out of the right hon. Gentleman's Bill, to show the utter falseness of the charges the right hon. Gentleman had levelled against shipowners, and to indicate also the direction in which legislation should proceed, in order to be effectual in saving life and property at sea. Before he sat down, he wished, in the strongest and most emphatic manner, to protest against the course which the right hon. Gentleman had taken. It was no special duty of his (Mr. MACIVER's) to defend the shipowners. Although he was himself a shipowner, he was thankful to be able to say that he had during his shipowning career been entirely free from serious disaster, and was therefore under no possible suspicion of defending his own case in whatever action he had seen fit to take. What he wanted to put to the House was that if there were such cases as the right hon. Gentleman had led the House and the country to believe there were, surely every legitimate shipowner was injured by them, and in self-interest, even if there were no higher motive, would cordially join the right hon. Gentleman in taking steps to prevent their recurrence. If there were such shipowners as the right hon. Gentleman had spoken of, they must be very unpleasant competitors of the legitimate trader. The legitimate trader was interested in having a law of such a kind as would, as far as possible, prevent the unfair competition of those who were less careful than they ought to be. Now, he believed the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade had behaved thoroughly badly. It was quite true that the courtesies of that House almost forbade language such as he had used; but it seemed to him that the right hon. Gentleman had exhibited but scant courtesy towards the shipowning class of the community. He seemed to treat them all as if they were quasi-criminals; and he (Mr. MACIVER) ventured to think that almost every Member of the House would agree with him in this—that the shipowning and shipbuilding communities, and those who had to deal with ships generally, had done a great deal for the country in the past. They had done a great deal more than screw-making in Birmingham; and he (Mr. MACIVER) could not help asking himself that night who was this man who, vested with a brief authority in that House of Commons, slandered men who had done so much—

MR. SPEAKER

The hon. Gentleman is transgressing the Rules of Parliamentary debate.

MR. MACIVER

I have no desire, Sir, to transgress the Rules of debate in this House. [Cries of "Withdraw!"]

An hon. MEMBER: I rise, Sir to call your attention to the fact—

MR. MACIVER (interrupting)

I shall submit to any penalty Mr. Speaker may impose upon me.

MR. SPEAKER

The phrase made use of by the hon. Member which I spoke of as transgressing the Rules of courtesy which prevail in this House was that in which the hon. Gentleman referred to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade as "slandering."

MR. MACIVER

said, if the use of that phrase was objectionable, however true he might believe it to be—if it was an offence against the House of Commons to use such a word he would at once apologize to the House of Commons, and express regret that he adopted it. At the same time it seemed to him that he had good reason to complain when a Gentleman in the position of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade made charges which he gave no opportunity of answering, and which, if he had made them in good faith—and it could not be suggested otherwise—must have been ignorantly made. Some, at least, of those to whom the right hon. Gentleman had referred were persons known to him (Mr. MACIVER). He (Mr. MACIVER) spoke especially of two Liverpool cases—in one case the person was known to him; and in the other the ships. He would here quote a couple of lines of Tennyson— A lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright; But a lie which is partly true is a harder matter to fight. The case of a man, however innocent he might be, who had lost a great number of ships, was a difficult one to defend; because the fact could not be got over that, unfortunately, he had been losing vessels. That difficulty presented itself in one of those Liverpool cases, and there was not one man in 1,000 out-of-doors, and he (Mr. MACIVER) did not suppose one in 100 here, who had had an opportunity of inquiring into the circumstances. He would take one case—he did not remember the name of the vessel for the moment; but he remembered the occurrence perfectly well. The particular vessel referred to was in charge of a pilot in the River Hooghly; and everyone who know anything about Calcutta was aware that that was a very dangerous river. The vessel being at the time under compulsory pilotage went ashore in the river, and was so damaged that she became what was called a "constructive total loss." Ultimately there was a compromise between the owner and the insurers; but that was one of the cases which the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade described to the House as "a loss." He (Mr. MACIVER) did not wish to speak at any great length detailing every case; but they might go through the whole list as he had done, and they would find that there was not one of those disasters that was not perfectly explicable, and there was not one out of which it could be said that the owner made any profit. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade led the House of Commons to believe that the gentleman who owned those vessels was "an unworthy shipowner," who drowned sailors for the sake of gain. Well, now, under those circumstances, there were two things which the House might expect to exist from that statement—first, that this gentleman drowned sailors; and, secondly, that he made something out of the transaction. Well, it was perfectly untrue that he made anything out of the loss of his ships; on the contrary, he (Mr. MACIVER) believed that what little money he had, had been almost entirely lost through those disasters, and, more than that, he had suffered very materially from the charges brought against him. As to loss of life, though it was true that vessels belonging to Captain Hatfield were lost under circumstances of which he (Mr. MACIVER) had given an illustration, in only one instance was there a loss of life, and in that case there was no possible ground of suspicion that the loss of the vessel was premeditated. She went ashore on the Long Sands, and owing to a difficulty with regard to the lifeboat there were a number of men lost. Well, the case he had endeavoured to put before the House was that a man, however innocent he might be—[Laughter]—hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway opposite, with their usual good sense, were laughing at the circumstances when he defended an innocent man. They did not understand this question; but he ventured to say that there were many in that House who did. The other Liverpool case—[Cries of "Oh!" and "Divide!"] He dared say it was very unpalatable to hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway to hear about these things; but he was about to speak of a case in which he knew both of the vessels very well; but in which, as it happened, he did not know the owners, who were referred to in opprobrious terms by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade. He happened to know that every single statement made by the right hon. Gentleman with regard to the Inchclutha was absolutely without foundation, with the exception that the vessel was unfortunately lost. Referring to this matter, he asked a Question in the House of the right hon. Gentleman, and the right hon. Gentleman declared that he was misreported. Well, he (Mr. MACIVER) happened to remember what the right hon. Gentleman said, and it certainly did not seem to him that there was a misreport to be complained of. There might have been a verbal inaccuracy in what appeared in The Times newspaper; but certainly that which appeared there and in other journals, and which he contradicted there and then, was substantially what the right hon. Gentleman seemed to him (Mr. MACIVER) to have said in the matter. What was the position? They had, by universal consent—except on the part of hon. Members below the Gangway—arrived at the conclusion, beyond any kind of question, that legislation for the last 13 or 14 years had absolutely failed. They had a Bill placed before them—a very long Bill—which he ventured to say there was not one Member below the Gangway on the opposite side of the Honse had read. ["Oh, oh!"] Well, he challenged any hon. Member sitting opposite to say that he had read the Bill. It contained 101 clauses and throe Schedules—the thing was a book. The House of Commons up to that moment had never been considering the Bill at all; it had really been considering the right hon. Gentleman's speech when he moved the second reading. He (Mr. MACIVER) wished to protest emphatically against the withdrawal of the Bill now, and to say that the right hon. Gentleman ought that day to do all he could to repair the mischief which he had brought about in the weeks that had passed. He ought, knowing, as he now did, the untruth of many of the circumstances to which he referred, to do all in his power to repair the injury he had inflicted upon shipowners. He (Mr. MACIVER) was afraid to say all he should like to say, for fear his language would not be Parliamentary; but he might put it that, knowing the truth, it certainly amused him to hear what the right hon. Gentleman said that day in that House. There was a world outside the House of Commons—the right hon. Gentleman's speech was addressed to those outside, whom the Birmingham Caucus could reach—but there were those outside who were not in direct relation with the institution in Birmingham with which the right hon. Gentleman was no longer officially connected; and he (Mr. MACIVER) was mistaken if it was not a long time before the right hon. Gentleman heard the last of what he could not help feeling were most improper statements. He urged the right hon. Gentleman, even at this eleventh hour, to refer his Bill to a Select Committee, in order that the charges he had made might be inquired into now, and in order that the law, which they knew, and which they knew on the confession of the Board of Trade itself, had failed, might be amended, and might not be made worse than it was at present, as it would be made if the House of Commons were unhappily to pass this Bill, of which some time ago the right hon. Gentleman moved the second reading. He (Mr. MACIVER) objected to the Order being discharged.

MR. CHAMBERLAIN

Mr. Speaker, I find it very difficult, with any sense of self-respect, to reply to the hon. Member (Mr. MACIVER), who cannot speak in this House on such a subject without transgressing the usual Rules of courtesy which are observed in this House—which are observed outside as well as in the House. I do not think there is another Assembly in the world, except the Birmingham House of Commons, where any hon. Gentleman would have dared to use such language as that which the hon. Gentleman has used towards me, knowing that I cannot call him to account in the way in which he would be called to account in other places.

MR. MACIVER

rose and endeavoured to speak.

MR. CHAMBERLAIN

I do not propose to follow the hon. Member's general argument; but I will ask the House to listen to me for a couple of moments while I refer to the two cases to which he has directed attention. The hon. Member states that, in referring as I did to the case of a certain Captain Hatfield, whom it appears is a constituent of the hon. Member's, I led the House to believe that he had been guilty of conduct which had contributed to a great loss of life; and, further, that he had made a profit out of the disasters. I will read the words I used. After referring to Captain Hatfield's denunciation of the Bill in the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce—after referring to his intimation that it was a Bill which should be kicked out at once, and to his throwing a copy on the floor and stamping on it, I said— I find that since 1877—less than seven years—Captain Hatfield has owned 12 ships, and in the course of that time has lost 11 of them. Adding together the periods for which each vessel has been owned respectively, I find that he has lost annually one in three of the ships he owned; and then he goes to the Chamber of Commerce in Liverpool and says—'Mr. Chamberlain is hampering a great industry.' Is this an industry the Souse of Commons is going to protect?"—(3 Hansard, [288] 694.) Now, that is the whole statement I made with regard to Captain Hatfield.

MR. MACIVER

It is not a true statement.

MR. CHAMBERLAIN

It will be evident to the House that I did not say a word about loss of life, for at that time I was entirely ignorant on the subject. Neither did I say a word about this gentleman having made a profit out of the loss of his ships, because I knew nothing about the insurances he had effected. The hon. Member talks about slander. Well, slander means bringing a false accusation knowingly against another man. I leave the House to judge who has been slandering in this matter. Now, I am going a little further into this case. The hon. Member asked me whether I had received a letter from Captain Hatfield, contradicting my statement; and it appears that Captain Hatfield must have sent a copy of the letter to the hon. Member before he sent the original to me. The hon. Member now admits that within 10 years Captain Hatfield has owned 14 ships—I say that in seven years he has owned 12, and that in the course of that time he has lost 11 of them. The hon. Member admits that he has lost 10 ships, and as to the eleventh what are the facts? Why, the facts with regard to the vessel lost in the Hooghly are these. The owner declared her to be a total loss; but the underwriters refused to pay the insurance, and I am told they did so for the reason that they believed the ship to be unseaworthy. Captain Hatfield, I am informed, agreed to a compromise with the underwriters, and obtained something like 50 per cent of the amount of the insurance. I believe that at this very moment the ship is running. The facts briefly are these—She appeared in Lloyd's List as condemned; when the accident happened to her Captain Hatfield brought in a claim for total loss; and that she is still running. Therefore, my statement is perfectly true that in less that seven years Captain Hatfield has owned 12 ships, and in the course of that time has lost 11 of them. It is said that in all these losses in connection with only one of them was there any loss of life, and then 16 poor fellows went to the bottom; but I find that there has been altogether a considerable loss of life in Captain Hatfield's ships independently of shipwreck, and, further, that there have been a number of desertions wholly unparalleled. The records show that there were 366 desertions from 39 vessels, and that there was not a single voyage without a desertion. Furthermore, it is shown that in several of these cases of loss of the ship that although all lives were saved the sailors suffered unheard of privations. I am speaking from information given me by Captain Hatfield himself. He also gave me information as to the amount of the insurance he had effected. He gave me particulars as to nine of the ships he had lost, stating that the amount assured was £42,150. It is not competent for me to precisely check these insurances; but I have been able to discover that Captain Hatfield has understated the case, and that he has omitted one insurance effected with French underwriters. But, assuming the correctness of his figures, I find he states the value of his ships as £49,500, so that he makes out a loss of some £7,000 on the whole in consequence of the disasters which happened to these nine ships. Well, I have had the ships valued by Messrs. Bayley and Ridley, very competent valuers, and they reported that the value amounted to £39,400, so that according to their impartial return Captain Hatfield made not a loss, but a profit of £3,000. All these particulars are additional to those I laid before the House when moving the second reading of the Bill. I knew nothing of these facts at the time, and, of course, could make no reference to them. I state them now because I am challenged by the hon. Member, and I must say that in my judgment the case against Captain Hatfield is very much worse than I imagined it to be when I made my speech. There is only one other matter to which I wish to call the attention of the House. The hon. Member gets up in his place, having probably in his possession a printed report of my speech, and says, speaking of two Liverpool ships, I referred to the owners of one of them—the Inchclutha — in opprobious terms. I will read to the House the terms in which I alluded to the owners of the Inchclutha. I said— Well, I will take a case that I think is significant, though I should be sorry to press it too far. I am going to ask the House to consider the cases of two vessels both belonging to owners of whose honour, integrity, and high character there cannot be the slightest doubt."—(3 Hansard, [288] 708.) That is what the hon. Gentleman calls speaking of the owners of the Inchclutha in opprobious terms.

MR. MACIVER

What I meant was this—that the terms used by the right hon. Gentleman with regard to the Inchclutha suggested that she had been under-manned and over-insured, and that these circumstances were in some degree the cause of her loss. It was that opprobrious suggestion which I referred to when I used the words "opprobrious terms."

MR. CHAMBERLAIN

The House, I think, will agree with me that that is a very lame explanation. In my speech I added— There was an inquiry into this case, and the Court found that the Inchclutha was seaworthy, and not overladen; but that, though her gross tonnage was 374 tons less than the Ajax, she carried 187 tons more cargo, and was, therefore, in a less favourable position to weather the storm. I find also—I do not attach much importance to it, and I only mention it because the subject of insurance will form so large a portion of my argument—that while the Ajax was self-insured, the Inchclutha was insured £1,000 above her cost, with no allowance for depreciation, and £6,300 on her freight, being the total amount at risk."—(Ibid. 709.) It is perfectly ridiculous to say that, in stating what was really a statement of fact, I was conveying any imputation against men whom I had previously declared to be persons of whose honour, integrity, and high character there could not be the slightest doubt. I do not think it necessary to go any further into the matter.

MR. WHITLEY

said, he very much regretted the course the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade had taken that evening. He could not help observing that the shipowners felt very much aggrieved at the complaints made by the right hon. Gentleman—complaints for which there was not the slightest foundation. He (Mr. Whitley) should be very sorry to say one word discourteous of the right hon. Gentleman, because he was one of those who believed that the debates in that House should be conducted in a spirit of courtesy; but he did feel, as representing a mercantile constituency (Liverpool), looking at the way in which some of them had been dealt with by the right hon. Gentleman, that they had a right to complain of that treatment. The shipowners had contended from the first, especially after the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, that the only way in which the charges he had made could be met was by the appointment of a Select Committee. The right hon. Gentleman had made a number of charges, and had had them circulated throughout the country; but the shipowners had not the slightest means of contradicting his assertions. He (Mr. Whitley) had, therefore, very earnestly trusted that the right hon. Gentleman would have taken some notice of representations made to him from all quarters, and would have allowed the Bill to be referred to a Select Committee. The very grave character of the charges the right hon. Gentleman had brought against the shipowners constituted the strongest ground for conceding the demand for the appointment of a Select Committee. As to the case of Captain Hatfield, he (Mr. Whitley) did not think that the right hon. Gentleman, by what he had said that night, had very much amended his position. The right hon. Gentleman had brought charges against men whom he (Mr. Whitley), too, had the privilege of knowing, and whom he believed to be incapable of such conduct as that imputed to them. With regard to the vessel lost in the Hooghly, the charge of the right hon. Gentleman amounted to this. He said that Captain Hatfield had made a claim for total loss, while everyone who knew anything about shipping in India know that claims in these cases were made for "constructive total loss." The right hon. Gentleman declared that the ship was totally unseaworthy, or quite unseaworthy; but that was entirely inconsistent with the right hon. Gentleman's succeeding observation, which was that the vessel in regard to which the claim was made for the full amount of insurance was still running. He (Mr. Whitley) could not help thinking that the right hon. Gentleman had made a great mistake in insinuating charges against gentlemen which those gentlemen contended they were quite able to disprove. It was a mistaken judgment on the part of a Minister of the Crown to bring serious charges against individuals without giving those individuals affected an opportunity of answering such charges. That was the complaint the shipowners throughout the country brought against the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman complained that the shipowners of the country had not met him in a friendly spirit; but he (Mr. Whitley) could not help thinking that that was quite as much the fault of the right hon. Gentleman as of the shipowners. He (Mr. Whitley), on one occasion, attended before the right hon. Gentleman with a large deputation; and he must confess that he had never waited on any Minister under such circumstances, or had been received in the same spirit. The right hon. Gentleman had taken the opportunity of reading a lecture to the shipowners; and, carried away by his feelings, he seemed perfectly incapable of distinguishing between those gentlemen who came before him and the rest of the shipowning community. The right hon. Gentleman's feelings, no doubt, did him credit, and he (Mr. Whitley) should be the last to defend shipowners capable of sacrificing human life to their own interests; but it certainly seemed to him that the right hon. Gentleman should distinguish between one class of shipowners and another. In consequence of the way in which that deputation was received, a feeling of unfriendliness seemed to prevail, and certainly the language the right hon. Gentleman had used in introducing the Bill was not calculated to allay it. He ventured to say, on the part of the shipowners generally throughout the country, that they were most anxious to meet any charges the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade might have to make against them; that they were men of honesty and integrity, and desirous, by every means in their power, of co-operating with the right hon. Gentleman in adopting means to prevent destruction of property and loss of life at sea. Surely it was better to go with the shipowners than to act against the whole body of them. The shipowners would cordially unite with the right hon. Gentleman in the endeavour to carry any measure they believed to be in the interest of saving life and property at sea. He could not help saying that the shipowners had not been fairly treated in that respect. One great charge made against them was in respect of over-insurance. Well, he (Mr. Whitley) had sent to Lloyd's for particulars of insurance, and Lloyd's in reply had written to say that they had given the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade the information; and the right hon. Gentleman, when asked what he had been informed, declared that what he had received had been private intelligence, and that he could not convey it to the House. If that were so, then the right hon. Gentleman had no right to base a charge upon that information against the shipowners. Another very reprehensible course which had been adopted was the obtaining of information as to cases heard by him from the Wreck Commissioner, who sat to make inquiries into the circumstances attending the loss of vessels, and to give decisions according to the evidence brought before him. He (Mr. Whitley) objected to any view of the Wreck Commissioner which was not contained in his decisions. A charge had been founded, either wholly or in part, upon the particulars and statements furnished by the Wreck Commissioner; and that to him (Mr. Whitley) seemed, as he had said, a very reprehensible course. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade desired to do all he could to secure the safety of human life at sea. He (Mr. Whitley) honoured the right hon. Gentleman for it; but he deprecated the means which had been taken to bring about that end. Though he could not co-operate with the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. MACIVER) in his desire to refuse permission for the discharge of the Order, yet he could not sympathize with the course the Government had taken in this matter.

THE SOLICITOR GENERAL (Sir FARRER HERSCHELL)

said, he could not too strongly express dissent from the statement of the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down that his right hon. Friend (Mr. Chamberlain) had brought charges against shipowners generally. His hon. Friend opposite had spoken about what he called the lecture read to the shipowners by the right hon. Gentleman at the interviews they had with him. Well, if there was anything of the sort, it was owing to what had been too much the case in these controversies—namely, to the tendency on the part of the shipowners to take to themselves individually everything said about shipowners generally. There were two methods of speaking of a class; one to particularize individuals as guilty of improper practices, and the other, without particularizing, to set out certain malpractices that existed; and it was not a proper frame of mind in which to consider the subject, if they were to frame useful legislation, for each individual to regard himself as referred to individually in the second mode of referring to a class. He disputed that his right hon. Friend had brought or intended to bring any charge against the shipowners generally. Many of them were under the impression that he had done so; but he (the Solicitor General) was satisfied that it was a false impression. As to the specific complaint made with reference to charges brought against the shipowners, this was not the opportunity for going into the question. He would remind his hon. Friend (Mr. Whitley) that the shipowners would themselves be the very first to point out the impossibility of going exhaustively into these questions in debate in that House. The shipowners had expressed a desire that the charges brought against them should be investi- gated before a Select Committee; but his right hon. Friend offered a far more impartial tribunal than a Committee consisting probably of a few shipowners and a few of those who had taken an active part in raising complaints against the class to which they belonged. His right hon. Friend had offered to refer the matter to a Royal Commission. These charges could be made before the Commissioners, and the case of the shipowners could be heard and put forward, and the considerations which ought to influence legislation in the matter could be thoroughly weighed and sifted. The shipowners would at least feel that the right hon. Gentleman was offering them the amplest and fullest opportunity of stating their case, much more so than they would have before a Select Committee of the House.

MR. C. H. WILSON

said, that the number of shipowners in that House was very limited; and therefore when an important subject of this sort, which was causing so great a sensation in the country, came on for discussion, the case of that class could not be very fully presented. Under the circumstances it was necessary that the matter should be fully gone into by a formal inquiry. Before, however, a Committee or a Royal Commission could investigate the charges made by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, it was important that those belonging to the class who were in the House should express their opinions. They had been recently told that the alterations which had been proposed by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, in the Bill which he had brought before the House, had been accepted by the shipowners of the West Coast, and had not been met with equal approval by the shipowners of the East Coast. He was surprised that the opposition to the Bill had come from the Liverpool interest, in the person of the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. MACIVER), and the hon. Member for Liverpool (Mr. Whitley). The Solicitor General had told them the matter was to be referred to a Royal Commission, and then they were told that that ought to be satisfactory; but what was the present position of the matter? Why it was this—that after a four hours' speech from the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, they were told there was a great and preventible loss of life going on at sea. Certainly, under such circumstances, there was no time to be lost in investigating everything connected with that charge The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade had that afternoon been asked when he intended to nominate the Royal Commission; but that information could not be obtained from him. Therefore when they looked on the Notice Paper that day and saw there Notices in the names of three or four, certainly three Gentlemen belonging to the shipping interest, to the effect that this Bill should be referred to a Select Committee, it was surprising to see that it was not proposed so to refer it. Why was it not to be referred to a Select Committee? He (Mr. Wilson) could speak with some experience on the subject of Committees, having for the last two months been sitting on the Committee considering the Thames Crossings. They had had 23 Sittings during the period he referred to, and it would be self-evident to all the Members of the House that during the whole of that time a Select Committee might have been sitting on the Merchant Shipping Bill. Twenty-three Sittings, or in his opinion even less, would have enabled a Committee to have arrived at some conclusion on the subject. He (Mr. Wilson) had had the honour of sitting on a Select Committee which was appointed in consequence of a similar agitation raised in the House under the auspices of Mr. Plimsoll. They were told on that occasion the same story that there was a great and preventible loss of life at sea. The story then was that the loss of life was principally through the ships carrying grain cargoes and being overloaded. Well, the legislation brought about at that time was supposed to be a remedy for those evils; but what were they told now? The statement now was that the state of affairs was as bad or worse than it was before Mr. Plimsoll's agitation, and that in consequence of the enormous strides in shipbuilding, which had led to the production of such splendid powerful vessels, they ought to be able to contend with all storms, and to do seafaring work with almost perfect safety. It was said that if in spite of all modern improvements, and all that legislation had done, great loss of life occurred, the shipowners were to blame. As a matter of fact, the blame did not attach to the shipowners, but to the Board of Trade, which had had great powers given to them, with a large amount of money, for the purpose of securing life and property at sea. He believed the Board of Trade had had some £40,000 a-year handed over to them for the purpose of superintending the Merchant Service of this country; and the officials of the Board of Trade, therefore, were really the people who ought to be blamed for any preventible loss of life that took place at sea. As far as they were able to judge—because information on such subjects could only reach private Members by side winds—but, as far as they were able to judge, the officials of the Board of Trade themselves were at variance in this matter. Those who were the advisers of the Board of Trade were responsible, no doubt, for a great deal which the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Chamberlain) had said. The right hon. Gentleman, no doubt, had every wish to make himself thoroughly acquainted with the subject, but had not been able to obtain the best information. They all knew that a little learning was a dangerous thing, and it was evident the right hon. Gentleman had not been fully informed, but had been, to some extent, led astray and induced to make a speech which, perhaps, with fuller information on the subject, he would not have dared to utter. However, this was not the time to go fully into a matter of this sort. The Bill was about to be withdrawn—the best thing which, to his (Mr. Wilson's) mind, could be done with it; but, at the same time, when such a charge as that was made against the shipowners, however blameable individual members of that class might be, he could not help thinking that if the information on which those charges were founded was incorrect or misleading, the practice of bringing such charges was to be condemned. The position of things was that a charge had been made to the effect that this loss of life was going on at sea, and it was, therefore, the duty of the President of the Board of Trade to appoint, without a moment's delay, either a Royal Commission or a Select Committee to go into these matters as fully as possible, in order that, on the earliest opportunity, the law might be altered where necessary. According to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, the losses were almost entirely connected with steamers; but if hon. Members went into statistics, they would find that the loss connected with sailing ships was much greater in extent than that connected with steamers. There were a great many details of this kind which wanted looking into, and which could only be gone into by a proper formal Court of Inquiry. He would not go into the question of over-insurance; still he must say that he could not agree with the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, that the question was of such first-rate importance. If the Board of Trade did not spend money enough in protecting the lives of the sailors, let them spend more. After the loss of a vessel let them say—"This vessel has been over-insured, and we will punish the owners." Above all, let them prevent all unseaworthy ships from going to sea. Every practical man knew whether a ship was unseaworthy or not. Let the Board of Trade have surveyors enough, and let them all be practical men. Let the supervision at their ports be sufficient to prevent all unseaworthy ships from going to sea.

MR. CHARLES PALMER

said, that he did not wish to enter into the controversy at that late hour; but having received more communications from persons connected with the shipping interest than, probably, any other Member of the House, he thought it only right to say that since the right hon. Gentleman had announced his intention of withdrawing the Bill, those communications he had received had been to the effect that the withdrawal was not to be regretted, but rather the reverse; and it was most satisfactory that the right hon. Gentleman had consented to appoint an influential tribunal to investigate the whole subject. He (Mr. Palmer) believed the shipping interest was perfectly content with that announcement; and he hoped, at a very early day, the right hon. Gentleman would be able to announce to the House and the country the names of those whom he intended to nominate upon the Commission, and that when the Committee was appointed that all the questions which had been referred to that evening would be impartially investigated. Those connected with the shipping interest also expressed a hope—and the right hon. Gentleman would agree with them in it, no doubt—that the Marine Department of the Board of Trade should undergo a thorough examination and investigation. He would not detain the House longer; his only desire was to give an expression to the feeling of the shipowners that they were content to have the Bill withdrawn.

MR. WILLIAM REDMOND

said, he did not rise unnecessarily to prolong the discussion; but since a debate on merchant shipping matters had been forced upon them that night, he must take this opportunity, as he represented a seaport town (Wexford), of saying that he was extremely sorry to find that the measure was not to be proceeded with. He should have been happy to give it his support. It was true, he had not had much experience in these matters; but with, perhaps, rather more knowledge than a member of the general public, he was bound to say his impression was that shipowners, as a whole, were a bad lot, and that, as a rule, they had very little regard for the interests of the unfortunate men whom they sent to sea to work their ships for the worst possible wages, and upon most miserable food. Every precaution that could be taken for the purpose of insuring that un-seaworthy vessels should not be sent to sea should be taken; and he thought the time would come when it would be absolutely necessary for the House to pass some measure to restrict the action of the shipowners of the country. There had been numerous cases of flagrant breaches of justice on the part of shipowners. Besides the worst cases that came to the surface, and could be quoted, there were a great many cases occurring every day, of injustice inflicted upon seamen by shipowners, which nobody ever heard about. He was very sorry, therefore, that this Session was not to see legislation for the purpose of putting a stop to these things; but, at any rate, he hoped, on the earliest opportunity, the Government would again bring forward a measure on the subject.

MR. WARTON

said, he was not going to enter into a controversy with regard to loss of life at sea. He wished to look at this matter from a thoroughly business point of view, because they had before them the extraordinary spectacle of a Minister of the Crown interested in a first-class Bill moving the withdrawal of that measure exactly seven weeks after having favoured them with a speech of four hours in introducing it. He (Mr. Warton) did not regret the speech, because they found in it an apt illustration of the evil the right hon. Gentleman professed to be anxious to cure—that was to say, the evil of overloading, and over-insurance. He certainly thought the right hon. Gentleman should have told the House—especially those connected with the shipping interest—why he had allowed so long a period as seven weeks to elapse before withdrawing the Bill. He (Mr. Warton) was not in the habit of saying unpleasant things to hon. Gentlemen opposite; he imputed no motives; but the case to which he was calling attention was a most extraordinary one—he did not think he could remember any similar case in his short Parliamentary experience. He could not remember any precedent in which a Minister had allowed seven weeks' delay before he could make up his mind as to whether or not he should go on with his proposal. The right hon. Gentleman in the course of these transactions had, at any rate, learned this lesson—that he was compelled to leave a subject of this kind to the consideration of an impartial Body; that he had done by referring it to a Royal Commission.

Motion agreed to.

Order discharged.

Bill withdrawn.