MODERN EXPLOSIVES. 795 



house officers discovered clock-work machines loaded with dynamite 

 concealed in barrels of cement just imported from this country, and 

 Irish revolutionary patriots in America avowed that they had sent 

 them to be used against England, and that they hoped by similar 

 devices to render English vessels unsafe and unprofitable. Many 

 remembered the project of Thomassen, years ago, for blowing up in 

 mid-ocean a vessel on which he had goods heavily insured, and won- 

 dered whether such plans could indeed be extended to the shipping of 

 a whole nation. There were like alarms later. The officers of the 

 Bothnia were naturally disturbed when two strangers prowled through 

 her passage-ways and, a few moments afterward, the carpets over 

 which they had passed burst into flames from some novel combustible 

 smeared upon them. In Liverpool a second discovery was reported 

 of dvnamite cartridges concealed in bales of cotton received from 

 America, and believed to be destined to destroy mills at Oldham. All 

 these were merely alarms. More lately an explosion of dynamite on 

 board the Glasgow steamer Severn is reported to have killed nine 

 persons and injured forty-three, four of these fatally. These things 

 have brought to public notice the want of any distinct, efficient law 

 to punish the sending of explosives on board ship with the purpose of 

 destroying her on her voyage. If an explosion occurs, if life or 

 property is destroyed, the general laws against murder, piracy, or 

 defrauding insurers, would probably apply. But suppose the infernal 

 machine is detected before injury is done, so that the offender can be 

 charged only with having sent it aboard. Is there any sufficient law 

 against this ? No doubt the practical danger is small. Aside from the 

 hope that villains capable of forming such a plot are very few in num- 

 ber, it is well known that most of the cargo of ocean-bound steamers 

 is received direct from responsible exporting houses, and a stranger 

 could scarcely obtain access to their packing-rooms in order to conceal 

 cartridges in their merchandise. Still there must always be some tons 

 of miscellaneous parcels, and the ship-owners can know little or noth- 

 ing of the senders of these. It must always be possible for a schemer, 

 under pretense of taking passage, to send a trunk aboard containing 

 an infernal machine. How could this be discovered ? But difficulty 

 of detection is no reason why the public should not have the protec- 

 tion of a severe law for cases which may be detected. Such laws as 

 exist are designed rather to forbid concealing the character of explo- 

 sives in order to avoid the ship-owner's objection to take them, or his 

 demand of a higher freight on the score of the danger, than to pre- 

 vent the heinous offense of plotting the destruction of the vessel. For 

 example, in New York city the authorities discovered that hands on 

 board the Havana steamship Saratoga were concealing gunpowder 

 packed in fourteen fifty-pound cans (seven hundred pounds in all), un- 

 derneath berths in state-rooms. On a canal-boat were found forty boxes, 

 each marked "I. R. P.," believed to mean "Irish Revolutionary Par- 



