The Sun.
London, England, 1860-11-09 00:00:00

THE SHIPOWNERS' GRIEVANCES.

At the annual meeting of the Sunderland Ship-
owners' Society a report was read and adopted, of
which the following is an extract :

" It is to be regretted that, throughout the great
contest, so much strength has been wasted in the
useless effort to prove that the repeal of the navi-
gation laws was a great political and commercial
blunder. Whether it was a blunder or not, the
deed is done ; and although your committee may
be of opinion that so wide an opening of our
trade was premature, that it was a departure from
the ordinary practical and cautious character of
British legislation, and that free trade in shipping
is much less likely to promote British interests
than free trade in manufactures and in commerce,
it has now become so thoroughly an essential ele-
ment of our commercial policy that, were any
seriously to advise retrogression, he would only
excite public feeling to an indignant resistance,
and expose himself to general obloquy. But, if
we cannot fall back upon a protective policy, why
not, it is said, retaliate in those cases in which
foreign countries have declined to reciprocate ?
Here your committee venture to suggest, with the
greatest respect, that the shipowners are in great
danger of losing sight of that which ought:to be their
exclusive object. Their province is not so much
the office of the statesman as to dictate the precise
form of the remedies to be adopted. For this rea-
son such a course is fatal to unity. The moment
particular measures of redress begin to be discussed,
differences of opinion arise—differences better be-
fitting the cabinet than a shipowners' committee;
and the consequence of this speculative disunion is
that those ' practical mischiefs, which all agree
in deploring, are not exhibited with the boldness
and vigour necessary to secure parliamentary
action. Of this there is ample evidence in the
select committee's report. At page 12 they une-
quivocally admit that, although British shipping
is manifestly labouring under great disadvantages
in regard to its competition with foreign shipping,
no English Government, Whig or Tory, has
made the slightest effort, even by the mildest re-
monstrance with foreign governments, to obtain
for it justice. But why is it that government
has been so remiss in its duty ? Clearly because
it has not been urged on by parliamentary pressure.
Then, why is Parliament so apathetic ? Why but
because the representatives of maritime counties
and boroughs are not operated upon by a vigorous
and concentrated public opinion. They see that
some shipowners have grown rich, notwithstand-
ing the complaints of the many ; and that, while
those stand unpatriotically aloof, the struggling
mass of complainants allow themselves to be dis-
united by political partisanship, party prejudice, and
vague theories. It follows that, whenever ship-
owners' societies are so unfortunately situated, they
exert no influence. The watchful statesmen, unable
to recognise in the society the combined expression
of public opinion, is not impelled thereby to any
definite course of action, and thus the shipowning
interest in Parliament becomes so feeble in its re-
presentation that it might as well, for all practical
purposes, be wholly unrepresented ; the executive
Government, subjected to no parliamentary stimu-
lus, does nothing; and the injustice of which British
shipowners, not without ample grounds, complain,
never records itself except in the speeches of a few
active members and the columns of a few friendly
newspapers,while to foreign Governments it is con-
fessedly unexplained, and for the most part pro-
bably wholly unknown.
" Your committee do not hesitate to say that the
grievances, admitted by the select committee to
exist, are spoken of by them in terms much too
gentle, and that the report of the London ship-
owners, so far as it expresses the perpetration of
gross injustice, is not a whit too strong. The pre-
cise form of the remedy it may be difficult to divine.
But its very difficulty ought to be a spur to com-
bined action. Until free trade becomes, in relation
to British shipping, something better than a one-
sided bargain, and the ships of England are placed
in all ports on an equal footing with foreign ship-
ping • until passing tolls and distinctive municipal
privileges are abrogated ; compulsory pilotage
abolished, especially in those—its grossly absurd—
forms in which it has often operated most griev-
ously upon the north country shipowners, and be-
come the occasion of extorting large sums of money
from them under the guise of legal process ; until
the whole of our maritime code has been revised,
the liabilities of shipowners modified, and the im-
posts upon them reduced to a minimum figure, your
committee would fail in its duty did it not, as the
organ of your society, emphatically record its con-
currence in the opinions expressed by the ship-
owning interest generally, and announce the de.
termination of their society to unite with other
societies in every practicable expedient for obtain-
ing redress."

NB. GLADSTONE ON TILE VOL UN-

TEEMS.

The Volunteers have now been reviewed by the
Chancellor of the Exchequer. He has hailed them
as the genuine growth of the British soil, and pro-
nounced them no fiction or expedient of the hour,
but a real and abiding institution. He has given
them the password of independence, and even in-
scribed "Italy" on their banner. He tells them
they must be reckoned, not at what they are,
but like " the Talbot," at what they stand for. It
is true that 173,000 Riflemen are no insignificant
defence for these Isles, no insufficient garrison to
leave at home while three hundred thousand are
fighting our battles by land or by sea, far or near,
in every region of the world. But, give the emer-
gency, and those 170,000 would multiply by ten,
and the "nation of shopkeepers" would bristle with
arms. The Chancellor of tne Exchequer points to
the horizon, such a horizon' and such a sky as pain-
ters usually give to a battle scene, and tells the
Chester Volunteers that this is their sphere, and
for this they must be at least prepared. With of',l.
cial propriety he thanks them for not coming to
the Treasury, but tells them that their rank is that
of soldiers, their field the whole world, and their
duty as needful and as glorious as any that ever fell
to patriot or deliverer. This is a good deal to come
from Mr. Gladstone, the High Church member for
the University of Oxford, the disciple of Peel, the
apostle of Peace and Free Trade, the sponsor, if not
the author of the French Commercial Treaty, the
prophet who lifted up his voice against the Crimean
War, the Chinese War, the Indian War, and all
wars ; the dreamer of pleasant dreams, the dweller
in sweet Utopias, the man of eloquence and arith-
metic, the politician whom it is equally difficult for
any Ministry either to dispense with or to control.
He has descended from the Treasury and his own
still higher Olympus of speculation to shake hands
with the British Volunteer and call him a Chris-
tian and a brother. He has committed himself
to almost every cause for which the moral weight
of the Volunteers may tell in the councils of
this country and the course of European
affairs. Can we believe that the cheapness of the
force is its only or chief recommendation in J-3,-ie
pure financial eye ? Are we to suppose of Mr.
Gladstone that, " though on honour h_e, is bent, he
has a frugal mind ?" No. There is not a states-
man who records his impressions so honestly and
so fully as Mr. Gladstone. Henceforth we must
set him down as the friend of the Volunteers. Who
would have thought it ten years ago, since the
statesman himself directs us to look back so far ?
Ten years ago nine-tenths of Mr. Gladstone's own
constituents would have pronounced dogmatically
that England was no country for a National Guard ;
that here every man attended to his duty,—the
soldier to his musket, the shopman to his counter,
the clerk to his pen, and the cobbler to his awl.
Twenty years ago we should have been told that a
National Guard was the organ of a revolution. To-
day we are told, on an authority that layman or
priest will not readily except to, that the Volunteer
Force is the cheap defence of nations.
But this need create no surprise to any one whose
experience has reached beyond a town, a coterie, a
season, or a Parliament. A great and free nation
is an inexhaustible mine of moral wealth. There
are men, indeed, who always prophesy little things.
Cut and dried moralists, red-tape officials, crusta-
ceous philosophers are always ready to tell us we
have got to the end of things. In their eyes the
resources of this great country are a beggar's
wallet, in which they fumble now and then and
find an old crust. There it is, use your eyes; your
teeth, if you like—a crust, and nothing more. Over
and over again within our recollection everything
has come to an end in this country--poetry, science,
history, the drama, painting, sculpture, divinity,
eloquence, conversation, beauty itself, a manly bear-
ing, sweet voices, pleasant smiles—everything, in
fact, that man ever saw, heard, or read of. We
don't believe a bit of it. It's all a figment of
the stout gentleman who fills a chair at dinner
parties, and who, when he can eat and drink
no more, thinks nothing more remains to be
done. Physical satiety is not favourable to intel-
lectual enlargement or moral aspiration. The
stout gentleman may be excused his prejudices
against progress, and many a thin gentleman may
be excused his bilious view of human affairs, what-
ever form it may take. But we are happy to
observe that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is I
longer to be considered the satirist of
He will not perform the part of a mute at the
"progress."
funeral of the British nation. He thinks that
there is a good deal of work in the old horse yet;
nay, more, that the old hcrse is but a young one,
and always young. We believe that everything is
to be got from this country yet that ever was got
out of any country, or any ram under the sun.
Queen Victoria has pressed her foot on the turf,

and 170,000 armed men have risen out of it to
stand round her throne. Who shall say that Eng-
land is used up after this ? We will expect any-
thing that men have despaired of. Its time may
not be yet, but it will come when it is wanted.
Mr. Gladstone points to the moral effect of the
movement on all who take a part in it. They may
go home with the feeling that they are serving their
country. They have made sacrifices for its sake;
they have made an investment of time, money, or
interest; they are soldiers ; their services and rank
are recognised, and all the duties of the British
citizen open to their eyes. They are associated
with others for this purpose, and they exchange
feelings and friendly services in a common cause.
It does not end in soldiering . it takes a larger and
higher range. Any one who has had ever so slight
an acquaintance with the educated youth of our
towns will know how exactly this meets their case.
They want something in act and outward circum-
stances that shall realise to them the high terms
in which they are wont to hear themselves and the
nation described. An orator makes a speech,
describing the British citizen—his calling, his rank
by thejside of Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, and
the rest. His youthful hearers ask what they are
to do, and how they can appropriate their moral
elevation. He can only tell them to vote for
Huggins for the borough, if it is a borough ; to vote
for Thompson for the ward, if it is a corporation; to
vote for Wilkins for the vestry, if it is a parish, and if
in all these cases the candidates for moral elevation
happen to have votes—which is not likely—he will
also tell them to subscribe to the Institute, if there
is one, and—but there ends the career of British
glory open to a private man of common rank and
ordinary powers. He is not unlikely to think that
the parlour of the publichouse opens as bright a
prospect. Now, the Volunteer Corps is just such
a form of citizenship and such an opportunity of
social co-operation as the million have secretly and
spontaneously desired. It is something to he, to
do, to talk about, and to represent in shape and deed
the rush which otherwise is a disquieting dream.
Every clergyman who knows anything of young
men and young minds, and has encouraged them to
open themselves to him, knows that what they
most desire is to have some real and active part in
that kingdom that army, that warfare, which is
so often described in the pulpit, but is otherwise
no more to be conceived than the El Dorado of a

vulgar adventurer. Moved by some sermon that
was never meant to move, to any purpose at least,
the youth looks into his Bible, and finds that the
primitive convert was something or did something
—preached, prayed, evangelised, prophesied, talked,
visited, had his place and function, arid could de-
serve a higher degree. So he comes to his clergy-
man, and after much pressing and lying in wait gets
a hearing. " What can he do, or be, to know and
feel that he is a member of the Church militant ?"
The answer is ready and easy to understand.
" You can subscribe to the Propagation, and Na-
tional, and Maternity, and Book Societies, the
Clothing Club, and the Coal Fund, if necessary.
Good by, the beadle will call on you with a card."
After the investment of a few shillings in the vain
hope that their mystic virtue will impart the re-
quired sensations, he goes up to the DisEenters, or
the Socialists, or any set of men and minds that
will give him something to do and be. This is
what that Benevolent Society whose claims we
lately advocated is about to do for the relief of
Metropolitan distress, and this is what the Volun-
teer Movement, in a military point of view, is
doing for the British subject in his national capa-
city. Both give all classes who may be idle and
yet willing something to do.— Times.

G UL A .R TRE A TM ENTOFA LU TR:.

At the Thames Police-court yesterday Mr. Slight,
one of the relieving officers of the hamlet of Mile-
end Old-town, came before Mr. Selfe with a luna-
tic, named Samuel Donald Scott, for the purpose
of obtaining the magistrate's order for the removal
of the lunatic to Colney-hatch County Asylum.
On Wednesday the 24th ultimo, two summoning
officers from the parish of St. Cuthbert, Edinburgh,
walked into the office of Mr. Southwell, vestry
clerk and clerk to the guardians of Mile-end Old-
town, and said that they had brought a lunatic
pauper from St. Cuthbert's parish under a pass war-
rant, signed by the Sheriff. Mr. Southwell perused
the warrant, and as nothing appeared therein di-
recting the removal of the pauper to Mile-end Old-
town, he made a remark to that effect, and said it
was very informal. The officers said that although
the order directed the removal of the lunatic to Lon-
don only, they had ascertained be was baptised at
Stepney and that in the certificate tb ere was a remark,
" Born M. E. 0. T., and therefore they should leave
the lunatic with Mr. Southwell. The clerk then
asked what evidence there was of identity, as upon the
obtaining of the warrant two witnesses, strangers, ap-
peared to have been examined, but not the mother or
sisters whom the officers said were still residing in
the parish of St. Cuthbert. Mr. Southwell also
suggested whether the pauper lunatic was not irre-
movable, and expressed a strong opinion that the
affair, to say the least of it, was most irregular,
and that he should refuse to accept a lunatic under
such an order. The officers then took up the order,
left the lunatic in charge of a police-constable ill
the street, and repaired to the Thames Police-court
to consult Mr. Selfe on the subject. Mr. Selfe
doubted the legality of the warrant, and said it
was most improper to send a lunatic into Englp,na
with such an informal document. If the man was
baptized in Mile end Old-town, it was evidence
that he was born there ; and upon 11,jae face of the
document there was no identit7r, and no proof 'that
Mile-end Old Town was Ile legal place of settle-
ment. The inspecto.:. of the poor of St. Cuthbert,
Edinburgh, said ',le, under the act of Parliament,
English Pal".7pers could be sent out of Scotland, and
left in. snly part of England ; on which Mr. Selfe
maile the remark, " Then you may as well shovel
them over the border, and take no further care or
notice of them." The magistrate characterised the
proceedings as inhuman, and said it would be a
great hardship on a poor and populous hamlet like
Mile-end Old-town if the pauper was left there to
be maintained out of the rates. The attention of
the Lord Advocate and other authorities ought to
be called to this case. He thought a great wrong
had been done in bringing a lunatic from Scotland •
to England tinder such circumstances, and that the
officers of the parish of St. Cuthbert ought to hav,,.;
communicated with the officers of Mile-end id_
town beforehand, so that the settlement, of the
lunatic could be properly ascertained.. The in-
spector said he should certainly lewd the .pauper
,
here, whether Mile-end received 'Llim or not ; and
finally, Mr. Selfe wrote the foj:iowing letter to Mr.
Southwell, and handed it the inspector :
of "St. Cuthbert y dear
ector of the poor of the parish
, M Sir,—The
EdiP!ourgh, tells me he has (under a war-
rants
produced) brol
",ght up a pauper to Londoh. The war-
rantselapf, The highly defective for various reasons, and,
t ears to
on the parish of Mile-end Old -town, to
in ip to
m'f
whom 'ire seeks to deliver the pauper. But the inspector
st'!...es that the man is a lunatic. However irregular and
improper his removal under these circumstances, may have
been, yet, if the lunatic is at large in your parish, I must,
in the interest of humanity, ask you to take the regular
steps for providing for him regular process. There is a
slight prima facie though insufficient evidence of his being
settled in your parish by birth.—Yours truly,

_
" H. S. SELFE."
Addressed "P. E. Southwell, Esq., Clerk to the Board of
Guardians and. Vestry Clerk, Mile•end Old-town."
Upon the Scottish officers again waiting upon
Mr. Southwell, and handing the above letter, he
read the first portion of it to them. They said
" Read the remainder." Mr. Southwell did so.
The officers said " We shall act upon that, and leave
him here." Mr. Southwell remonstrated with
them, and said they had done very wrong in bring-
ing a lunatic over to England in sxch circumstances.
The officers became somewhat insolent got into a
cab, and drove away, leaving the poor fellow in the
street. The order was not left or producedlon the
second visit. The poor creature, who was a con-
firmed lunatic, was brought to the Mile-end Old-
town workhouse the same afternoon.
Yesterday Mr. Slight produced the lunatic, and
was accompanied by Mr. Benjamin B. N. Lyel,
physician and surgeon, of White Horse-lane, Step-
ney, to give evidence of Scott's insanity.
Mr. Slight said that Scott had
arisbeen sent to Colney
Hatch Lunatic Asylum as aph pauper lunatic,
and he was rejected, the officers of the Colney
him in with-
out Hatch Ayslum construing it into a case of a lunatic
man, with a very
appeared veryrestless
,awthhlnetic
a m wanderingagi
st abroad,ra t narndi!
r. would
intTelhleigelunntantoiicl
here asked the magistrate if he could tell the reason'
why he had been under confinement since he had
irtaentne
left the ship Cautious Bride. There were no deaths
and no contagion on board that 1 • 8 lip.
Mr. Selfe—l will attend to you presently, Mr.
Scott.
Dr. Lyel said he saw the lunatic on the 29th of
October, and again that day, and was satisfied he
was a confirmed lunatic fitnot '
Mr. Slight—The lunati • to be at large.
e is
the hamlet of Mile-end 0 now chargeable to
ld-town. I believe his in-
sanity was caused b
Indies. y a coup de soleil in the East
• Mr. Selfe said it was revolting to humanity, and
unjust to the hamlet
or Mile-end Old-town, that the
lunatic should have been removed from the Morn-
ingside Asylum, Edinburgh, and sent away to
London unknown
to his mother and friends, who
Edinburgh,
and settled there. He should
make no further comments on the ease besides this,
that the unfortunate lunatic, whose friends were,
he believed, i _ n good circumstances, ought not to be
in England as a pauper. He made an order for the
removal of the lunatic I
t o C o ney-hatch Asylum.
He had •
• lust perused a letter forwarded to him by,

Mr. Southwnll, and which he handed to our re-
porter. He had no objection to that letter being
made public. It was from the mother of the lunatic,
and to the following effect:—
" " 3, Forbes-street, Edinburgh, Nov. 6, 1860.
Mr. Southwell,—Sir, I received a letter from you this
morning, and was surprised to hear that my son had been
removed from Morningside Asylum without his mother's
and sister's knowledge. lam much pleased at the opinion
that it is inhuman and illegal—I must say most ungrateful
and wicked, in my nephew, James Hills, senior, refusing
to pay the board. My husband was Capt. Alexander Scott,
and he took my nephew out to India in 1821. My husband
commanded at that time the East India ship the Lady
Lushington in the year 1821, that was unfortunately
wrecked off the Coromandel coast. My husband died at
I Sierra Leone, in Africa, a few years afterwards, in 1825.
My nephew, James Hills, sen., and James Hills, jun., are
about the largest planters in Bengal. My son was the only
support, and I may say entirely kept his mother and sis-
ters, and therefore you may judge how I feel his loss. His
name is Samuel. He is named after Captain Samuel
Brown, that manufactured the chain cables for the ship-
ping ; indeed, a distant relation of my husband's and mine,
as you must understand I married my own cousin. I
can also mention another friend of his father's, a Mr.
Samuel Lennox, a shipowner, but believe he died some
years ago. My son was educated at Mr. Donald Ariel's
Bengal Establishment, Hackney. He went out to India,
to his cousin's, and became a planter, and lived there for 20
years. My son was born at Barbados-terrace, in the parish
of Stepney, Mile .end, Commercial-road. It is ungrateful in
his counsin's not doing something for him as he never would
have seen India if my husband had not taken him out to
India. It has been the making of his (the cousin's) family,
and to have the insolence to treat his cousin in that man-
ner, and, as our minister tells us, the awful malediction of
the 109th Psalm will be their portion that oppress the widow
and the fatherless. As to his illness, we never understood
the cause of it, as his father went a long while ago to India,
and never turned insane. lam a widow, 71 years old. I
was married in the parish of Antrum, near Jedburgh, by
the Rev. Dr. Campbell,minister of the Established Church
of Scotland. Immediately after my marriage I went to
London, in 1810, and lived there till 1832. During the time
I was in London the captain and me lived in different
houses, Stepney-causeway, Baroados-terrace, John-street,
rent and taxes £6O n-year, or about. After my husband's
death I lived in Hoarse-reet, all in Mile-end Old-town,
Commercial-road. Mrs. Hills, that lives at 23, Devonshire-
terrrce, is my son's cousin, and has been several years out
in India with him. Speak to her and tell her she is to write
to her brother and her husband on the subject. I am much
annoyed about by son, as I liked him in Morninside Asy-
lum, near his own family. He was in Morningside Asylum
since 1853 or 1854, and came home ill from India. Please to
write all information.—l remain, yours respectfully,
" MART SCOTT."

COUNTRY 111211?KET8.