On Monday Mr. Chamberlain, in moving the second reading of
the Merchant Shipping Bill, made a very masterly speech, lasting three hours and three-quarters, on the evidence be had collected to prove the need for the measure. He showed that when Lord Salisbury, speaking at Lillie Bridge, had spoken of his statements as " an attack upon a great interest, founded upon monstrous and fantastic charges," he had really brought as strong an accusation against his own former colleagues as against Mr. Chamberlain himself. Sir Stafford Northcote, speaking on February 10th, 1876, had used language which Mr. Chamberlain was content to accept as the pith of his own case. He remarked that the outcry brought against his Bill was cer- tainly not brought by men who had reason to assert that the present state of things was satisfactory. The first meeting of shipowners against the Bill was attended by 59 delegates, of whom 47 were shipowners. And it appears that during the last five years these 47 shipowners had lost 65 ships and 367 lives, and that 9 out of these 47 had in the same time lost 35 ships and 177 lives. Mr. Chamberlain did not assert that any of these casualties was due to wilful neglect, or to any want of legitimate precaution ; but he did assert that it was not for a trade which had by its own experience proof of so terrible a loss of life, to deprecate a very grave effort to put things straight. The loss of life was not diminishing, but rather tending to increase, and that in spite of very great and widespread efforts to increase the number of harbours of refuge, of life-boats and lighthouses, and all other such securities against loss of life; and it was due in great measure to the system of insurance, which not only secures shipowners against loss by wreck, but sometimes secures them a great gain by wreck. This he proved, as we have elsewhere shown, by com- paring the loss of life in self-insured fleets, where every wreck falls on the owner, with the loss of life in ships insured by underwriters, and by showing that the former rate of loss is hardly more than a sixth of the latter. The speech marshalled. the whole facts of the case in the ablest way, but the short dis- cussion which followed, and which was adjourned, appeared to show that the shipowners are as bitter as ever in their opposition. to the Bill.
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