of proroguing Parliament in order that shipping legislation should be evaded, and further charged him with indifference to the loss of life at sea!  The onslaught was so fierce and irresistible that it became a necessity not only to listen but to act.  Thus it came to pass that a hitherto obscure gentleman, who had no connection whatever with the sea, was the means of carrying into law one of the most beneficent pieces of legislation that has ever been introduced to the House of Commons; and his name will go down to distant ages, with renown unsurpassed in the pages of Mercantile History.  And shame to him who would detract from the great reformer his share in the act which has been the means of saving the lives of multitudes of seamen, and which has stamped upon it the immortal name of Samuel Plimsoll.

Drastic reforms cannot be brought about without causing inconvenience and even suffering to some one; and I am bound to say a vast amount of unnecessary hardship was caused in condemning unseaworthy vessels, many of which belonged to poor old captains who had saved a bit of money, and invested it in this way long before there was any hint of the coming legislation which was to interfere, and prevent them from being sailed unless large sums of money were expended on repairs.  Scores of these poor fellows were ruined.  Many of them died of a broken heart.  Many became insane; not a few ended a miserable existence by taking their own lives; or died in almshouses, and under other dependent conditions.  Of all classes of men, I do not know any who have such an abhorrence for the poorhouse as the sailor class.  They will suffer the greatest privations in order to avoid it.  It was a hard, cruel fate to have the earnings of a lifetime, and the means of livelihood, taken from them by a stroke of the pen, without compensation; and England again degraded herself by substituting one crime for another.  These fine old fellows had been at one time a grand national asset; some of them had fought our battles at sea; but even apart from this some compensation should have been voted to all those who were to be affected by legislation that was sprung upon them, and passed into law for the public good.  It may be said that any scheme of compensation must face heavy difficulties, but that is not a sufficient reason for not grappling with the question.

Compensation to the cattle-owners during the cattle plague was difficult no doubt to adjust.  Indeed all revolutionary schemes are surrounded with complexities that have to be got over; but in the hands of skilled, willing workmen they can be carried out.  Not very long ago a political party introduced a scheme for compensating the publicans—­ostensibly because drunkenness would be diminished.  It bubbled over with difficulties, but it would have been passed into law had the other party of the state not intervened in such a way as to prevent it.  The same political party which thought it right that the publicans should be compensated, were not unmindful of some more of their friends, and voted something like five million sterling per annum to be distributed among landowners, parsons, &c.  When the poor old sailors, withered and broken by hard usage, pleaded, for pity’s sake, not to be ruined, their appeals were ruthlessly ignored.