* LORD BALFOURMy Lords, I will not trouble you with many observations in moving the Second Reading of this Bill. The object of the Bill is to amend the Act of 1880, one of the clauses in which prohibits altogether the payment of seamen's wages by means of advance notes. As your Lordships know, the conditions under which sailors are employed make it impossible that their wages can always be paid to them monthly or at any stated time as the wages are earned, and the usual custom is that they are paid in one sum at the conclusion of their engagement. In the case of those men who may have been improvident, or in the case of those who may have met with wholly undeserved misfortune, it is often the case that when they want to make a new engagement they may be without the means of 290 providing themselves with the necessary outfit. By the Act of 1880 shipowners and those who were employing sailors are not allowed to make any conditional advance to them of money out of what they would earn during their coming engagement to enable them to enter upon it. A practice had grown up in reference to the matter among shipowners and employers in the ports throughout the United Kingdom of giving advance notes, which led to practrces injurious to the sailors, and in 1880 the Legislature absolutely prohibited those conditional advance notes. A clause was put in the Bill—which became law in that year — which prevented sums of money so paid being deducted from the amount earned, and which would have had to be paid at the conclusion of the engagement. The clause enacting this prohibition has not worked well. It has not served its purpose. It has proved to be very easily evaded, and in this way among others. Sailors, and those who employ them, have made engagements to work for 1s. or other small sums for one or two months, but at the same time a promissory note which they could discount has been given to them to make up the difference between the 1s. and the amount for which they were actually working. It is not possible to go behind such an engagement as that, and therefore the clause in the Act of 1880 has been practically evaded. The matter has been carefully considered by the very strong Commission which was appointed to inquire into matters concerning loss of life at sea, and they came unanimously to this finding—that, while the practice which I have just mentioned to your Lordships was extremely inadvisable upon the evidence before 291 them, it was almost impossible to dispense with the system altogether, under which seamen procure advances out of their earnings when at sea, whereby they might be enabled to provide themselves with necessaries, kit, and so on, and they recommended that the wisest course would be to legalise the practice, limiting advances in all cases to an amount not exceeding one month's wages. That recommendation has been very much pressed on the Board of Trade, and the Bill which I have now to lay before your Lordships is simply and solely for the purpose of giving effect to it, and allowing the sum so advanced, being not more than one month's wages, to be deducted at the conclusion of the engagement from the sum due to the sailor. The Bill has been unanimously passed in the other House of Parliament, and I now beg to move in your Lordships' House that the Bill be now read a second time.
Bill read 2a (according to order), and committed to the Standing Committee of Bills relating to Law, &c.