Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/520

 life, but will be a benefit to the careful Shipowner, who will find his business increase, while the premium to be paid for insurance will be reduced."

Parliament having, for many years, been engaged in attempting to regulate minute details about shipping, it is not surprising that Shipowners should have complained of being harassed in their business by well-intended but ill-contrived legislation, and that they should, when further legislation of this sort was injudiciously proposed, have resisted it to the utmost of their power. Indeed, the Board of Trade itself had, for some time, seen the absurdity as well as the danger of a public department, imperfectly acquainted with the science of shipbuilding and with the interests of the commercial marine, attempting to dictate to shipbuilders and owners of vast experience the best mode of conducting their business; and, in the evidence before the Commission, Mr. Gray, Assistant-Secretary Marine Department, admitted that many enactments designed to secure safety of life at sea had been mischievous, and ought to be modified or repealed.

For instance, the obligation by the Merchant Shipping Act of 1844 to carry a certain number of boats in proportion to a ship's tonnage, was found to be impracticable, and, consequently, the Board of Trade, by the amended Act of 1873, took upon itself a discretionary power in this matter. But discretionary powers in this case, as in many other instances, did not work well in practice; surveyors differed in their views as to the number of boats necessary, and the number of boats sanctioned at one port was frequently disallowed at another. Similar objections