out of the 474 vessels detained and surveyed by the Board of Trade under this Act, 435 have been on the report of their own officers, and 39 only on complaints made ab extra.[1] To these facts I may add, asIn making these appointments, the fact seems to have been overlooked that, at all our ports, there are the surveyors of Lloyd's Register, or of other similar associations, whose services might have been utilised with a great saving of public expenditure, and with, perhaps, greater efficiency. Yet I read, to my astonishment, in the public journals not long since a letter (6th August, 1875) from Mr. Plimsoll, addressed to the President of the Board of Trade, in which, among much irrelevant matter, he urgently recommends eighteen more surveyors to be appointed by Government, at a salary of not less than 1000l. per annum. I sincerely trust no such appointments will be made; but that Government will direct its attention to other more economical and more efficient modes of removing the evils of which Mr. Plimsoll complains, if indeed they exist at all to the extent alleged. There is no use hiding the fact that all such appointments must be filled, in a great measure, through patronage, and that it would be impossible to find men, even at the tempting salary named, competent for the numerous technical and responsible]*
- ↑ However beneficial in its results, it may well be questioned if any body of surveyors ought to be empowered at their pleasure, without complaint, to thus retard trade and stop the ordinary course of commerce; and I am disposed to question alike the policy and the wisdom, as well as the necessity, of this regulation. There appear to be now employed in these questionable operations, no less than 117 Government surveyors, "shipwrights," and "engineers," stationed at different ports in the United Kingdom, twelve of whom are retired officers of the Royal Navy, besides a good many so-called "shipwrights," who can have very little knowledge of the construction of merchant ships or of their requirements.[a
