1871.] Steam Boiler Legislation. 221 



but the inexorable logic of facts has left them no 

 alternative. 



This Association, as already stated above, was founded 

 fifteen years ago for the administration of a system of 

 voluntary periodical inspection with a view to the prevention 

 of steam boiler explosions. The experience of that term 

 of years has shown that inspection is adequate, but that 

 voluntaryism is not. Inspection has succeeded, voluntaryism 

 has failed. The difficulty is not with the boilers, but with 

 the boiler owners. Inspection will prevent explosions, but 

 the owners will not have their boilers inspected. 



The cause of this neglect of inspection may in many in- 

 stances be simple ignorance; and it is thought that the recent 

 explosion at Liverpool may be taken as a representative one. 

 Here was an old second-hand worn-out boiler eaten away 

 by corrosion till reduced to about a sixteenth of an inch in 

 thickness, yet worked at a pressure of 60 or 70 lbs. on the 

 square inch. It was situated in a populous part of the town, 

 and surrounded with dwelling-houses. It was only cut off 

 from a public thoroughfare by a 9-inch wall, which afforded 

 concealment but no protection. The boiler exploded ; the 

 sanctity of the dwelling-houses all around was invaded ; the 

 greater part of the boiler was hurled into one house, and a 

 fragment into another, while the ruins of the boiler setting 

 and other debris were scattered in every direction. Two 

 children in one house were killed, and a woman injured ; 

 another child was killed in the public street, and a lad at 

 the works scalded and crushed to death. Yet the owners 

 appear to have been ignorant of the danger. The boiler 

 had but a few months before received a home-spun inspection, 

 and been declared perfectly sound, and equal to last the 

 owners' lifetime. The owners trusted it ; both of them 

 were within a few yards of the boiler at the moment it burst, 

 and narrowly escaped being killed themselves. The de- 

 struction of their premises exhausted their resources, and 

 thus left them unable to repair the ruin their bad boiler had 

 caused. The public outside had no voice in the manage- 

 ment of this boiler, yet they had to suffer the consequences 

 of its explosion. All this suffering may be fairly attributed 

 to ignorance on the part of the owners, or they would not 

 have jeopardised their own lives in the manner they did. 

 Nothing but coercion in some form or other will meet such 

 cases as this. 



Proposition No. 4. 



That although it is necessary in the interest of the public 

 that inspection should be enforced by law, it is not advisable, 



