Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/506

 Underwriters of Lloyd's are thoroughly organised for the purpose of grappling with such matters, having their agents at all the principal seaports of the world, with every facility for readily obtaining information respecting the cause of losses, and the nature and character of the claims made upon them; nor of the important fact that they not merely resist claims, as may be frequently seen in our courts of law, but are occasionally prosecutors in the case of fraudulent losses. So that it is altogether a mistake to describe the Underwriters of Lloyd's, much less of the marine insurance companies, as a weak body of men, whom a shipowner can "bully" into an unjust settlement. The photographs he supplied were, however, so curious in themselves, and so novel to the public, generally, and especially to many members of the House of Commons, and his statements, though sometimes hap-hazard, were given with such evidently honest intentions, that his book attracted unusual notice.

But, however well-disposed the House of Commons may have been to listen to him, and to the recommendations in his book, the Bill he introduced for its consideration could not possibly be entertained with any regard to the great maritime interests of this country, nor could they be adopted without full inquiry; indeed, they were little short of a transfer of the construction and management of the whole of the shipping of Great Britain from the owners to some department of the Government, which was to survey every ship built, and every ship sent to sea.