of detail which Parliament may consider necessary, in the construction, equipment, loading, and navigation of our ships? All these matters would be much better done by a popularly elected board chosen from merchant Shipowners and underwriters than by any Department of the Government. In their hands might be safely placed the appointment of surveyors: one Department of this new Board attending to the hull of the ship, the other to her navigation, as at present; all these matters being subject, of course, to such regulations as Parliament might consider it expedient to impose, and represented in Parliament by the President of the Board of Trade, or, in lieu thereof, by a Secretary of State for Commerce, should that be desirable.
I merely throw out these remarks for consideration, being aware that many obstacles, though few real difficulties, would require to be overcome in carrying out some such re-organisation as I venture to suggest. But whatever changes Ministers may consider most expedient to adopt, they must not lightly tamper with the merchant fleets which the skill and genius of our people have created, or with the position they have achieved since relieved from those legislative enactments, by which they were bound for more than two centuries. These fleets are now the largest, and unquestionably the finest, in the world, and instead of foreigners overstocking our own ports as was prophesied, we now conduct the greater portion of the maritime commerce of foreign nations.[1] It is, therefore, no idle boast to say, that
- ↑ See Appendix No. 14, p. 637. Tonnage entered and cleared in the United Kingdom, United States, France, Holland, Norway, Prussia, and Sweden, distinguishing between national and foreign ships from 1850 to 1873.
