vessels to their mutual-insurance associations. My experience (and it is not a short one now) teaches me that nearly all legislation in this direction, is unsound in principle; and, as a rule, pernicious in practice. I think, for instance, that we have already erred in the attempt before noticed to measure the standard of merit in the case of anchors and chains, although we may have improved in the mode of testing them.
Mr. Plimsoll moves an Address for a Commission of Inquiry, which was unanimously granted.
Royal Commission on unseaworthy ships, 1873-4.
However, the House of Commons, ever ready to
listen to the appeals of humanity, and with the most
laudable desire to do what it could to save life and
to mitigate the disasters incidental to seafaring pursuits,
was fairly disposed to legislate even further in
this direction, should it really appear that fresh
legislation was necessary; hence, accepting in Mr.
Plimsoll an earnest, if not a wise counsellor, of
measures for the grandest of all objects—the saving
of human life—the House, stimulated by his recent
work, unanimously approved of his address to Her
Majesty, who was graciously pleased not merely to
grant the Commission he had prayed for, but to
place upon it "her most dear son and counsellor
Alfred Ernest Albert, Duke of Edinburgh," who,
himself a sailor, was fully competent to understand
the nature of the inquiry, and had a fellow-feeling
for the sailors of all classes, on whose behalf the
appeal was made.
Its members. No Commission in our time has consisted of more able and impartial members. Besides His Royal Highness, it had as chairman the Duke of Somerset, a nobleman of shrewd sense and of very sound judgment, who had been First Lord of the Admiralty;
