der to avoid it. It was
a hard, cruel fate to have the earnings of a lifetime, and
the means of livelihood, taken from them by a stroke of the
pen, without compensation; and England again degraded
herself by substituting one crime for another. These fine
old fellows had been at one time a grand national asset;
some of them had fought our battles at sea; but even apart
from this some compensation should have been voted to all
those who were to be affected by legislation that was sprung
upon them, and passed into law for the public good. It may
be said that any scheme of compensation must face heavy
difficulties, but that is not a sufficient reason for not
grappling with the question.

Compensation to the cattle-owners during the cattle plague
was difficult no doubt to adjust. Indeed all revolutionary
schemes are surrounded with complexities that have to be got
over; but in the hands of skilled, willing workmen they can
be carried out. Not very long ago a political party
introduced a scheme for compensating the
publicans--ostensibly because drunkenness would be
diminished. It bubbled over with difficulties, but it would
have been passed into law had the other party of the state
not intervened in such a way as to prevent it. The same
political party which thought it right that the publicans
should be compensated, were not unmindful of some more of
their friends, and voted something like five million
sterling per annum to be distributed among landowners,
parsons, &c. When the poor old sailors, withered and broken
by hard usage, pleaded, for pity's sake, not to be ruined,
their appeals were ruthlessly ignored.

A most extraordinary feature of the agitation to prevent
loss of life at sea was the attitude of some shipmasters.
They believed it to be an undue interference with their
sacred rights. At the time when Mr. Plimsoll was vigorously
pushing his investigations into the causes for so many
vessels foundering, he went to Braila and Galatz, and
examined every English steamer he was allowed to visit. Some
owners, hearing that he was on a tour of investigation,
instructed their captains not to allow him admittance; and I
heard at the time that these instructions in some cases were
rudely carried out. One forenoon he paid a casual visit to
the steamer "_A----_," and entered into conversation with a
person whom he assumed to be the commander. He chatted some
time with him upon general topics, and soon discovered that
th