The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1875-07-30
MIR. PIimsOn and the .svested Inter-
est In Floating COINS.


motion of the Premier the order for his rep
rimand was discharged ''by an overwhelming
majority" This course on the part of Mr.
Disraeh was happy recurrence to that tact
to which he has mainly owed his great politi-
cal successes. Mr. Plimsolps case against
rotten ships and fraudulent insurance is of
interest the world over, and for this reason
his conflict with authority in Parliament
merits an attention that would otherwise
never be given outside of Great Britain to
any issue on points of order or privilege
raised in the British Parliament; for behind
the issue on privilege, which is local, lies the
broader issue, that is human, OF the systema-
tized wholesale murder of sailors, and Parlia-
ment could scarcely act on the one without
enforcing public consideration OF the other.
As the law now stands IN England sailors
who have once shipped must go to sea, what
ever reasons they may find on board why
! they should not. If they quit the ship they
may be arrested, imprisoned, put on board
| by the police and sent to sea in duress.
| They may have discovered that the ship is
not only unseaworthy in the ordinary sense,
logged that she cannot hold together in the
winds that every ship is sure to encounter,
and that she is owned by a house that regu-
larly sends to sea rotten ships tolerably
insured, which always go down. They
may have q satisfactory knowledge of
ali this, but if they cannot establish it before
local magistrate, who may himself be one
OF the owners, the authorities will put them
forcibly into their floating coffin and they
must sail out to what they know is certain
death. All this seems improbable and mon
strous, but 1t constantly occurs, and Mr.. Plim-
soil in the years of labor he has given to the
subject has at length thoroughly drawn pub
| lie attention to these facts, and has most con-
clusively shown that no statement of this
traffic in sailors lives by English merchants
can be more horrible than the facts will
justify. He announces, further his intention
to show that this ''vested interest" has its
vigorous representation in Parliament.
But owners OF ships could scarcely contem-
plate with complacency the repeal of the laws
IN virtue of which runaway sailors are sent
on board by the magistrate; for that might
place the interests OF a great traffic at the
mercy of the whims and fances that come
| and go in the forecastle, or might put COM
mercial establishment at the mercy OF those
who had any reason to contrive conspiracy
| against it. There are sailors who always run
| away and sailors who are constitutional
| grumblers, and one of these will corrupt and
dissatisfy a whole ships company, while a
yarn spread as to the temper of the captain
or the previous history of the mate has often
emptied ship OF sailors as suddenly as the
unguessed presence of water down below
would have emptied her Of rats. These are
the extremes. Commerce is never very greatly
| embarrassed by nonsense of this sort
| on the part of sailors, though trouble
has arisen from it and the laws that restrain
this sort of difficulty in the interests Of ships
and shipowners, and, indeed, commerce gen.
orally, are good and salutary But shall
these good laws be perverted to terrible uses?
Shall they become the weapons of murder
GUS oppression? Shall they be employed to
minister to traffic in mems lives than which
the slave trade itself is not more barbarously
| dreadful ? Shall the tolerably digested yarn
of some lll-natured sailor, who says the ship
is unseaworthy, keep in port first rate craft,
and lose her a fair wind while tedious in
| quiry is on foot? Shall villanous owners
who, by collision with underwriters en-
| poyes, have insured their worthless ship as
| No. l. and who hope to collect the money
shortly, use the law to send dozen or twenty
sailors to imminent peril or certain death by
the allegation that their complaint of the ship
is unfounded and their dissatisfaction frivo-
ous-allegahons that the interested magis-
trate hears with favor he does not accord to
the sailors story
This is the problem that has now come be-
fore the British public in circumstances
likely to secure for it more attention than it
has received before through all the labors of
the earnest reformer who has come to the
front as the friend of the sailors and the
champion of their cause against the canting
commercial public Of England that subscrbes
TO put down the slave trade out of pockets
lined With the proceeds of this murderous
industry. Mr. Plimsoll's study of this subject
is before the world. His statistics have been
printed over and over again, and be is GER
tainly, of all men in England, the one most
familiar with all the phases of the trouble,
and most interested to give sufficient defence
TO the sailors without leaving the shipowners
unprotected Out of his knowledge only
could come satisfactory remedial law, and
if it were warped against one class by his too
enthusiastic sympathies with the other the
House could straighten it. But bill drawn
by him the government refused to accept and
one was drawn more moderately. SO far the
''hoating coffin" interest gained point 1t
may not have been their triumph exactly but
the advantage was theirs; and Sir Charles
Adderley's bill, inasmuch as 1t did offer
remedy, though an inadequate one, was TO
| NJ pIinaoU and his sailors the holt 1oaf 4bo ~