Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 3).djvu/567

 Now, arguments such as these are really unanswerable. Statesmen and others, who have to encounter the harassing difficulties of official life, and who know that all executive power must be exercised by a minister, or by individuals responsible to him, and, through him, to the public, might say, "How are we, unless all ships are under our immediate control, to meet questions put to us in the House of Commons, such as, 'Whether such and such a society licensed by Government had the folly and audacity to allow of spring safety-valves, or of boats not fitted with Clifford's Patent?' or how could we justify a licence granted to an association which showed such flagrant disregard of modern inventions and of seamen's lives?" But the reply to all this is that it is ''not the province of Government to legislate on such details as these'', any more than it would be to dictate by Act of Parliament, how the details of any other branch of trade or manufacture are to be carried out. The duties of Government have long since been defined, and it is because Government, of recent years, has gone far beyond its duties in the case of Shipowners, that Shipowners complain, and justly complain, against Government for a "meddling and muddling" in matters alike beyond its province and its knowledge.

Reverting to the principle which so many persons now say should be enforced by legislative enactment, the seaworthiness of every ship, there would be great difficulty in carrying that out by Government, as seaworthiness is not definable. That is to say, though a vessel may be seaworthy, when launched, (even then it would depend upon the trade in which