36 Original Articles. [Jan., 



of coasters and fishermen in a higher degree than of sailors who make 

 long voyages, since the dangers and difficulties are much greater in the 

 two first cases than in the last, both in proportion to the mileage and 

 to the men who really have to encounter them. With a good ship 

 and plenty of sea room a sailor has little to fear from any storm ; 

 moreover, the officers only (and in large ships they are few in propor- 

 tion to the crews) address themselves to such difficulties as require 

 thought. In small coasting, and especially fishing craft, where the 

 crews frequently consist of two, and rarely of more than three or four, 

 hands, every man is called upon to be a pilot ; he must be acquainted 

 with every rock and shoal, with the tidal phenomena of the district, 

 with the indications of change of weather, and under the guidance of 

 this knowledge he makes his voyage or selects his nightly fishing- 

 ground ; he becomes skilful in the management of craft, and adven- 

 turous in habit. And here, again, we may turn to Cornwall for 

 illustration. Projecting farther than any other part of the island into 

 the warm seas of the south and west, and possessed of a relative coast- 

 line nearly twenty times that of even Great Britain as a whole — 

 indeed, nearly twice that of any other English county — it is not sur- 

 prising that her coasts swarm with seafaring men. The well-known 

 dark-brown lug sail of the Mount's Bay fishing-boat is seen, not only 

 in every part of the British Archipelago, but a few years ago a crew 

 of sis men, in one of these boats, undertook and performed the voyage 

 to Australia, and that only for the purpose of fishing there. A gen- 

 tleman, who knew the parties well, told the author of this paper that 

 a fearful storm which they encountered in the Indian Ocean was duly 

 chronicled in their well-kept log, and accompanied with the charac- 

 teristic remark — " It would take a good ship to stand this storm, but 

 our boat behaves admirably." 



" A nation of shopkeepers" should be distinguished for integrity, 

 and, though we may be sometimes compelled to regard commercial 

 morality as an adulterated article, it remains to be a truth, well re- 

 cognized by the British merchant, that " honesty is the best policy." 



The genuine Englishman is also characterized by a love of inde- 

 pendence and a resolution not to be content with the bare necessaries 

 of life. " Potatoes and salt may keep body and soul together," but he 

 expects the accompaniment of beef, which he would rather earn than 

 permanently receive as a gift ; he cannot afford to be lazy or impro- 

 vident, hence he largely avails himself of Friendly, Provident, and 

 Co-operative Societies, and Penny and other Savings-Banks. No 

 doubt some of these schemes are ill-advised and prove to be failures, 

 but this only serves to throw his providence into greater prominence, 

 since successive disappointments of this kind have entirely failed to 

 eradicate. this trait of character. On November 20, 1862, the number 

 of individual depositors, charitable institutions, and friendly societies 

 in Savings-Banks was upwards of a million and a half, and their 

 deposits amounted to more than forty and a half millions sterling. 

 In the year just mentioned somewhat under six hundred thousand 

 persons deposited very nearly one million nine hundred and fifty 

 thousand pounds in the Post-Office Savings-Banks of the United 



