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NOTICES OF BOOKS 



Our Seamen: an Appeal. By Sam. Plimsoll, M.P. London: 

 Virtue and Co. 



Surely a more terrible bonk than this has never been written. 

 It differs from all other narratives of the terrible. In all fearful 

 natural catastrophes the remembrance that what has happened 

 has been inevitable has its influence in fortifying the mind. In 

 reading of destructive wars or battles, we recognise some object 

 which in the view at least of the combatants has rendered the 

 destruction of life and property a necessary evil. Narratives of 

 plague and pestilence are generally adorned by acts of heroism 

 which cause us almost to forget the horrors of the events with 

 which the narrative deals. Shipwrecks, in like manner — only not 

 such shipwrecks as the book before us deals with— have their 

 grand episodes. And, moreover, in war and battle, plague, 

 pestilence, and famine, in shipwreck and explosion, we seldom 

 have instances of the deliberate destruction of human beings 

 by their fellows. Nay, even such events as the Massacre of St. 

 Bartholomew or the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, 

 have usually resulted rather from the inversion of a high motive 

 than from any utterly base and sordid consideration. 



But in the book before us we have the account of the syste- 

 matic destruction of life and property for certain sums of money. 

 We see bands of men sent to almost certain death by a con- 

 trivance as terrible as the boat of Nero, but calculated to operate 

 on a far larger scale. And more marvellous than all, we see 

 bodies of men, ready for the sake of a moderate wage, to face 

 what amounts very nearly to the certainty of death ; though by 

 an ingenious arrangement of our laws matters are so arranged 

 that a part of this heroism commonly depends on the dread of 

 the disgrace of imprisonment in our common gaols. 



At the root of the system leading (if all that this book says 

 can be maintained) to these fearful results, is the system of in- 

 surance employed as against sea-risks. This system is probably 

 but little known to the general public. We propose to give a 

 brief account of its peculiarities. In the first place, a ship is 

 not insured by any one Company, but by a large number of 

 persons, who (from the mode in which the risk is accepted) are 

 called "underwriters." Each of these accepts a very small part 

 of the risk. Accordingly, if a ship is lost, and there are reasons 

 to fear that there has not been fair play, each underwriter has 

 but a small interest in making any inquiry into the affair. But 

 this is not all. No underwriter is strong enough to dispute a 

 claim. An underwriter so acting incurs odious misrepresentation 

 and suspicion, and, as a rule, by one such art completely ends 

 his career as an underwriter,— this too, even though " the brokers 



VOL. in. (n.s.) 2 K 



