having a very important bearing on the opinions I have hitherto ventured to express, that only 24 out of the 474 vessels were detained because they were overladen; and that, out of these, not a single vessel detained was alleged to be overladen on information given by the crews, notwithstanding the encouragement they had to become informers against their employers. This power to detain is extended to cases of overloading and improper stowage or imperfect loading, and the conditional orders of release are of a very elaborate character, while the provisions concerning payment of expenses, and the mode of appeal, are made far more full and explicit.
This Act further gives power to vary the requirements contained in the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854 with regard to boats—requirements, I may add, which it had been found practically impossible to comply with. It likewise contains a clause, which ought to have been the law long since, making it criminal (though the dictates of humanity, it had been thought, were in themselves sufficient), in a
- [Footnote: duties that would be required of them. But if such men could be
found, are we to hand over the whole of the vast maritime interests of this country, from the time the keel is laid to the despatch of the ship to sea, to the supervision and control of a certain number of Government officials, however competent? As it is, the duties of the surveyors, already appointed, are too frequently as ludicrous as they are questionable. I daresay Mr. Plimsoll must have felt this when he recommended in his letter to Sir Charles Adderley, that "we ought not to have less than four detaining officers in Ireland, four in Scotland, and ten in England, and that the minimum average(?) salary should be 1000l. per annum." Of course he meant them to look after the officers already appointed as well as after the ships; and that they should be "apart altogether from the Permanent Secretary, and the Secretary of the Marine Department," whom he charges, in the same letter, without, by the way, one tittle or shadow of evidence, with the grossest dereliction of duty.]
