The Sun.
London, England, 1844-03-07 00:00:00

Mr. J. MASON (a Chartist) then addressed the meeting; and
the resolution having been carried,
Mr. O'CONNELL returned thanks.
Thanks having been voted to
.the Chairman, the meeting Sepa.
separated. It lasted considerably upwards of four hours.

RAILWAY BILLS.

FIRST REPORT FROM TIIE SELECT COMMITTEE ON RAIL-

WAY BILLS CLASSIFICATION.
The Select Committee appointed to consider which of the pending
Railway Bills shall be deemed competing Bills, according to the reso-
lutions agreed to by the House, have agreed to the following Re-
port :

Your Committee having considered the cases of the under-men-
tioned Railway Bills,
Bolton and Preston, ManchesteF and Leeds (Heywood
Brighton and Chichester, Branch),
Chester and Holyhead, Midland Counties Consolidation,
Colchester and Harwich (No. 2), 'Newcastle and Darlington June-
Eastern Counties, tion,
Eastern Counties (Brandon and Northern and Eastern (Newport
Peterborough), Deviation),
Edinburgh and Glasgow, Norwich and Brandon,
Furness, ,Salisbury Branch,
Great Western, ;Slainannan Branch,
Guildford Junction, iSouth Devon,
Harwich Railway and Pier, South Eastern,
Huddersfield, South Eastern (Canterbury, Mar-
Lancaster and Carlisle, gate, and itamsgate),
London and South Western, Taff Vale,
31acelesfield and Birmingham West London (Extension),
(Macclesfield and Poynton Yarmouth and Norwich,
Branches),
are of opinion, that, of the said Bills, the Colchester and Harwich
Railway (No. 2), and the Harwich Railway and Pier, are alone Bills
for competing lines.

SHIPWRECKED FISHERMEN AND
MARINERS' BENEVOLENT SO-
CIETY.

(From the Post Magazine.)
We have frequently advocated in these columns, the
cause of the above-named excellent Society, and we hope
with some little success. Our attention is again drawn
to it by a handsomely-printed volume, which the So-
ciety has just issued, containing a list of donors and sub-
scribers up to the close of the past year. To this list is
appended the names of Mariners and Fishermen, who
are members of the Society. Although the number of
Mariners and Fishermen thus enrolled may, at the first
glance, appear extensive, it is comparatively small, when
it is considered that the charity has been established ex-
pressly for the benefit of this particular class, and that
the annual subscription is only half-a-crown. Our
belief is that the Committee, indefatigable as they
have been to promote the interests of the charity,
have confined their attention too exclusively to
the means of procuring assistance from benevolent
individuals who have no connection with the sea
service, instead of adopting some efficient system
for making the objects and operations of the institution
known among the class of men who are most deeply in-
terested in its success. This may have arisen from the
circumstance of there being thousands of seamen who
have no home but the ships in which they serve—a
constantly varying residence. Although seamen, how-
ever, do not always keep to the same ship, they gene-
rally keep to the same port; and we apprehend there
would be little difficulty in carrying out, by the means
of local agents, some system by which every seaman in
the British mercantile navy might be afforded the means
of enrolling himself as a member of a Society to which
he would hold it to be an honour to belong, and to
which he would feel that under the calamity seamen
are so frequently exposed to, he might look for assist-
ance he could nowhere else expect to receive—assistance
which, as a member, he would not only be privileged to
ask, but, from the regulations of the Society, would be
entitled to receive.
It may be seen what can be effected by local exertion,
by referring to the lists of Mr. A. J. Hutchings, of
Tooley-street, Mr. James Stephens, Ratcliffe-highway,
and Mr. William Laws, High-street, Wapping.
The Charity, in reference to its objects and the claims
of members, may, in fact, be considered a "Seaman's Be-
nefit Society," and when the proverbial liberality of the
British sailor is considered, and his reckless indifference
to the value of money the moment he gets it into his
possession, it is quite clear that all that is requisite to en-
sure the enrolment, is to adopt means for making known
to him the blessings which the Society is calculated to
afford to himself and others engaged in the perilous ser-
vice of earning a livelihood on the deep waters.
We observe that, during the past year, the very large
sum of 2,5001. was distributed in relief of cases of the
nature of those above referred to ; and as the annual
subscription is only half-a-crown, and as there is a re-
gulation that " should it happen that demands are made
on the funds of the Charity beyond what it is able fully
to meet, then members of the Society and their families
are to have prior consideration to other applicants," it is
to be expected that every seaman and fisherman into
whose hands these remarks may fall, who has not yet
enrolled himself a member of the Society, will consider
it a duty he owes to himself and those who may be de-
pendent on his exertions, to hand in his name to the
nearest local agent, by whom he will be furnished with
a handsome medal, ass seal of his connection with the
institution.
A striking instance of the value of this medal, and the
importance to mariners of becoming members of the
•Society, has been recently afforded. Last Wednesday
fortnight, James Mathews, a seaman, called at the So-
ciety's office in Bucklersbury, and entered his name as a
member. He sailed from London the same evening,
and on the following Sunday morning could descry his
home from the mast head. The day opened calmly and
beautifully ; but the serenity of the morning was fol-
lowed by a tempestuous noon, and during the -hurricane
that arose the vessel foundered, and all on board perished
in the very sight of their families and friends. What
pen or tongue shall attempt to picture the feelings of the
orphan children, the hopeless widow, and the agonised
parent who witnessed the afflicting scene. Two days'after-
wards the body of poor Mathews was found on the shore by
his own father, and conveyed by him to the desolate dwell-
ing of the bereaved family, whose distress was heightened
by the appalling fact that they did not possess the means
of affording decent interment to him who had been
their sole stay and support. The Society's medal was
found on his body, but the meaning of it was not under-
stood, as none of the family had seen it before. One of
the villagers, however, wrote to Mr. West, the Secretary
of the Society, for information, giving the circumstances
of the case, when the Committee wrote back by return
of post, stating that the medal had been given to
Mathews on hp enrolment as a member, on the pre-
ceding 'Wednesday, and that, in consequence, the Com-
mittee had remitted a sum of money for the funeral
expenses, and to afford the means of present subsistence
for the widow and children, who, without such assist-
ance, would, at this moment, have been inmates of a
workhouse.
Where is the seaman who may read this simple and
affecting narrative (and hundreds of a similar kind have
occurred) who will not hasten to enrol himself a member
of the Society? What is half-a-crown a-year, and
where is the man, with the heart of a British sailor, who
will say lie cannot afford such a sum, in order to secure
for some shipwrecked brother mariner, or for himself, or
his own family, in some day of peril, the benefit and
blessing_ of the Society's protection? If the maritime
reader is a married man, it would be culpable, it would
be cruel, to lose one unnecessary moment, in securing
for his family the advantages arising from membership;
if he is unmarried, will he prove himself so unworthy of
the noble character of a British seaman, as to say he
cannot afford half-a-crown a year towards a charity
whose benevolent operations are exclusively in favour
of his own class, even if happily he might never, in his
own person, have occasion to make a demand upon the
Society's funds? Five glasses of grog less in a year,would
do the business. We would go even further, and say,
" let none be satisfied, simply, with the fact of their own
enrolment," but let each make it his business, and a point
of honour, to ascertain that his shipmates are members of
the Society, as well as himself. Let the man who re-
fuses to become so, for we cannot suppose there will
ever be above one such a man on board any single ship,
be sent to Coventry—let there be in every forecastle a
Coventry corner, so long as there is a man in the crew
without the Society's medal. It would be a glorious
sight in the eyes of Europe, a circumstance never
to be obliterated from the history of the world, if the
entire mercantile navy—and why not the entire mer-
cantile navy—why should there be the exception of a
single man?—should thus voluntarily enrol themselves
as a society for mutual protection and relief under those
casualties to which, in the nature of their perilous
occupation, they are continually exposed. If the
public, generally, have hitherto done so much for them
through the agency of the Society, how much more will
the benevolent be disposed to do when they see the
mariner himself taking his humble part in the business
of the Institution, by becoming a member? Nothing, we
feel assured, is wanted to effect this great end, but that
seamen should be afforded the means of enrolling them-
selves. How this is to be effected must be left to the
judgment and exertions of the Committee, to whom the
naval profession are already under so large an amount
.of obligation.
That those relieved are grateful to the Society we have
abundant means of knowing. We will cite one instance.
On a Sunday at the close of the past year, sixty fisher-
men, belonging to Cromer, on the coast of Norfolk,
most of them men who had fought and bled for their
country, proceeded to the parish church, and knelt down
in a body in the aisle, returning thanks to God for the
blessings that had been conferred upon them, and the
many who had received relief from the Society, through
the hands of its local honorary agent, the benevolent
Mr. Robert Herring.
We implore those who may have their attention
drawn to the subject for the first time, by this notice, to
fill up in their own minds, the scene of misery, of which,
in the instance related of the poor fellow Mathews, we
have drawn so hasty and imperfect an outline; and we
have no doubt that many a cheerless hearth will have
comfort and hope brought to it by the aid of the appeal
we have made—feeble though it be—in favour of the
destitute families of Shipwrecked Mariners.
Before concluding this notice, we would call the par-
ticular attention of the officers in her Majesty's navy, to
the objects of the institution. Many of them, including
the brightest names in the service, are active members
of the Society; but there are others who have not iden-
tified themselves with its operations. We would im-
press upon them the value of their not only recording
their own names as members of the Society, but causing
its. objects to be explained to the men under their corn•
wand. Nothing but the most zealous co-operation of
the men and the public can enable its managers to alle
viate so large an amount of inisery as has been occa
sioned by distressing shipwrecks.

'REDUCTION OF THE THREE-AND-A-HALF PER CENT.
&NNUITIEs.—The proposition of the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer, it is said, will be to reduce the rate of interest from
3i to 3 per cent. The amount; of stock upon which these
annuities are now paid is about 250,000,000/. ; and a reduc-
tion of per cent. would, therefore, leave a balance of
1,250,0004 per annum on this account, in favour of the
llational income.

We understand that the trial of Thomas Wilson,
lately spirit-dealer in Greenock, and presently prisoner in the
jail here, indicted for the murder of his wife, is to take place
tEdinburgh oa the 14th of the present month—Greeno:k
41(kertiser.