Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/511

 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.

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.

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;