ENGLAND—that is to say, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland—is a great, a wealthy, a populous, and a powerful country. But it is likewise essentially a maritime one. If not maritime it would have been nothing; for without that spirit of enterprise, daring, and love of adventure, which has ever characterised its sons, it would probably to this day be occupied by a sparse agricultural population, and, from the time of the Norman Conquest, have been but an appanage to the crown of France.

Providence, however, intended it for greater things ; and at a remote period, even long before the islands composing it were separated from the adjoining continent, those vast deposits of the useful metals, and the coal for fusing them, were stored tip within its limited shores, which were destined thereafter to work its forges and its looms; to provide its trading and war fleets; and to carry its overflowing population, its manufactures, and its civilization to the remotest parts of our globe.

Such has been our great, because useful, mission; a mission intended not merely to aggrandise ourselves, but to benefit mankind ; to promote, not only our own prosperity and happiness, but also add to the welfare of the whole human race.

To the fulfilment of this mission all classes of our countrymen, and especially our manufacturing classes, have contributed, in their several spheres. But of what avail would have been all our mechanical and manufacturing skill and industry, if our ocean carriers and the defenders of our shores, our naval and merchant seamen, had failed us ? Recognising in them, therefore, as is generally done, a most important, indeed indispensable, part of our working machinery, might it not be expected that we should, as a nation, take at least as much pains to promote the efficiency of that machinery as we do to perfect the steam engines and other contrivances which we make subservient to our use? In fact, might we not expect that our merchant seaman should, as a rule, be a pattern to those of other nations, not only as regards his professional skill, but as an intelligent and respectable man, worthy to represent his country wherever his duties should call him ? Alas ! that the reality should be so different. Alas ! that instead of beholding him with pride, and feeling that in foreign countries our reputation is safe in his hands, we should, on the contrary, so often have to blush for him, not only as a seaman and an Englishman, but as a man : for it is of no use shutting our eyes to the fact that too frequently he is drunken, profligate, and unprincipled, a discredit alike to himself and to his country.

Wherefore is this ? What has brought about so sad a state of things? What is its remedy ? We cannot conceive that there is anything in the nature of a seafaring life to demoralize; and if not, surely any other causes which tend to the deterioration of our seamen must be remediable, although it may take a long time to eradicate an evil which has been of slow growth.We will state what we believe to be some of the causes which have made a large portion of our merchant seamen so different from what we could wish them to be; but there may be others that have not occurred to us:— 1. One cause has been, we think, the abolition of compulsory apprenticeship.

When every merchant vessel was compelled to carry one or more apprentices, according to her tonnage, all of whom were bound to serve for seven years, a large number of seamen were thus regularly brought up under a course of discipline, and taught their professional duties and habits of obedience from their boyhood. The shipowners of the United Kingdom, in an evil moment, petitioned Parliament to relieve them of this requirement, as of a burden. Their petition was granted: the adult landsman, too old to learn, took the place of the young, improving lad, and now a generation has scarcely passed before we find our homebred seamen disappearing, and our merchant ships half manned by the adult refuse of our seaport towns, and by foreign seamen who have found their way to our shores.

2. A second cause may be considered to be the want of early and suitable education— a want so general amongst the classes from which our merchant seamen are collected.

3. A third cause is the prevalence of drunkenness — that terribly demoralising habit, that crime which, by depriving a man of his reason, places him for the time below ,the level .of the beasts of the field; and which, both directly and indirectly, is a fruitful incentive to vice and cause of misery.

4. A fourth cause is the system of discharging seamen the moment their vessels arrive in an English port, and their entering fresh ones at the last moment before sailing; so that, as a general rule, there is a change of crew between every voyage, an owner never becoming acquainted with the men in his employ, or even, perhaps, knowing their names. Accordingly, as might be expected, there is but seldom any sympathy existing between an owner and his men. He insures his vessel well, and concerns himself but little with their welfare, even in providing for their comfort or safety whilst on board her; and they, on the other hand, are perhaps equally indifferent to the due performance of their duty to him.

5. A. fifth cause is bad accommodation on shipboard, with consequent discomfort, injury to health, and engendering of dirty habits.

6. Lastly, another fruitful cause is evil association on shore. No sooner has the merchant seaman landed from his vessel at any of our larger ports than he is instantly surrounded by the worst and most depraved characters, both male and female, who obtain a livelihood by preying on him, and encouraging him to indulge his worst propensities.

Their first object is to get him into their power, to effect which they advance him money on his pay; and he is often given drugged spirits, or beer, and being thus stupefied, is afterwards robbed at leisure, and not seldom ill-treated also; until, miserable, penniless, and degraded, he is glad to escape from his persecutors, and to seek refuge again on the " briny deep." Such is too often the melancholy life of the much-vaunted British sailor. Alternate intervals of hard work, with many hardships, and of profligate dissipation, until, after an inglorious and sad career, he is prematurely called away, to account for the use or the abuse of the precious gift of life which a benevolent Providence has bestowed on him.

Again we ask, why must this be ? Why should sailors be more dissolute, more improvident, more childishly helpless than other men ? What is the remedy ? We answer, that we fear they will continue to be so as long as they continue to be neglected, and to remain under the same evil influences as at present. Also, that under any circumstances comparatively little can be done with the present generation of our merchant sailors; and that, although we may ameliorate their condition and afford them greater opportunities for improvement, yet it must be through the rising generation alone that we can hope to produce any great and permanent change in their character. " Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it," was the teaching of the Jewish sage, and all men from then until now have acknowledged the truthfulness of the precept. We trust then that our legislators will, ere long, awaken to the truth that the present fallen condition of our merchant seamen is a public discredit and national sin, and that they will feel it to be their duty to make serious and earnest efforts to raise them up, and by educating and specially preparing, as far as possible, the new race which shall take their place, to make them the worthy representatives of a great maritime and Christian country.

We will proceed to state some of the remedies which have occurred to us, and not to us only, but to many others who have thought and written on the subject; taking the presumed causes of the evil of which we are treating in the order in which we have already named them:— 1. Apprenticeship.

Formerly every merchant vessel was compelled by law to carry one apprentice to each 100 tons of burden, which apprentices were bound to serve for seven years. A constant supply of seamen, trained from their youth, were thus insured to take the places of those who, from death, loss of health, advance of years, or other causes, were annually lost to the service.

In the year 1854, however, the shipowners of the United Kingdom were short-sighted enough to induce Parliament to relieve them of this requirement; and from that date to this the class of seamen who man our merchant ships, has gradually deteriorated.

It is still optional with an owner to take apprentices; and the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854 devotes five clauses to the regulation of apprenticeship, more especially with reference to the apprenticing of pauper boys, and directs all shipping masters to facilitate the same. Comparatively few shipowners, however, avail themselves of the permission, nor is it likely that a greater number will voluntarily do so. If, therefore, we would wish to regain the former high character of our Mercantile Marine, by training and educating its members expressly for it, as is done in the Royal Navy, a well-regulated, compulsory apprenticeship must be returned to; but it should be for a less term of years; and it is the opinion of many practical persons interested in our merchant shipping, that it might be so regulated as not to be even at first disadvantageous to our shipowners, whilst it undoubtedly would in time be immensely beneficial to them, by giving them good servants instead of bad ones, and by making their ships a credit to them, instead of their being, too cften, a disgrace.

2. The want of early and suitable education.

Allied to the question of apprenticeship is that of early education; and the effect of the two together on the state of our mercantile marine would, in a few years, be magical. The raw material to work on lies also at our doors, and its absorption and working up would be a double advantage, inasmuch as it is at present a source of shame and anxiety to all thinking Englishmen ; and, transformed into a body of real British seamen, it would be beheld by them with pleasure and with pride. We allude to the thousands on thousands of neglected boys that live in the streets of our large cities and towns, and who have received the modern designation of " City Arabs." A vast number of these are, perhaps, simply neglected. The exigencies of their parents' every-day life of toil, or struggle with poverty, and, we fear, as often their pernicious and demoralizing habit of drinking to excess, leave them neither time nor money to look after and to educate their children; whilst a large number of these helpless and much-to-be-pitied little ones are even sent into the streets by their unnatural fathers and mothers to live by begging and stealing.

It is calculated that the drain on our merchant seamen which 'has to be annually replaced may be roughly taken at about 20,000, a large proportion of which, might, probably, without difficulty be provided from this class of neglected youth alone, the very waifs and strays of our population, at present reared up only to fill our gaols and convict establishments, and to find occupation for our police; but who, if drafted into training and reformatory ships, which have already, on a smaller scale, produced such admirable effects, would be saved from moral perdition, and raised to the position of useful members of society. To no better use could our old wooden frigates and line of- battle ships be put, than to be stationed as training and reformatory ships at all the ports round our coasts, and to no more legitimate use could all the available balance of the Mercantile Marine Fund be appropriated than to their maintenance.

3.'Drunkenness.

We can offer no suggestion for the diminution of this vice, which is by no means confined to our seafaring population; but we may feel sure that, as a more respectable and self-respecting class of men abound in our merchant service, it will become less and less prevalent.

4. Change of crew every voyage.

The general custom in this country is to discharge the crews of vessels in the foreign trade immediately on arrival home, and to engage a fresh crew for the next voyage, the vessel being loaded and unloaded, rigged and refitted, by men termed "lumpers." The shipowner has, therefore, no knowledge of his men, and evinces no sympathy for them ; and this is made only too painfully evident to them by the miserable accommodation which is provided for them on board their ships, and sometimes by the unseaworthy state in which the latter are sent to sea. We are aware that the principal steam companies and a few large shipowners retain their men in their employ, although they may sometimes be changed from one of their vessels to another, and that when they have good men they will try to keep them ; but these instances form the "exception," and not the "general rule." Without doubt, the more shipowners can fall into the system of retaining their men in their employ, and the more interest they take in them, the better and more attached servants they will find them to be; and we think that any of them really desiring to promote the improvement of their men, would have no great difficulty in doing so, especially those possessing several ships; whilst owners, having only two or three vessels, might associate with others and engage to employ the men. in their joint service in preference to others, whenever any of them were available.

5. Bad accommodation on board our merchant ships.

We regard this point as a most important one. For how can we expect men who are housed no better than pigs to acquire habits of cleanliness and decency? And has not cleanliness been represented as ranking next to godliness in its beneficial effects on the characters of men ? The Merchant Shipping Act, section 231, it is true, defines the number of cubic feet of space which shall be appropriated to each man and boy, and states that the apartment in which they are placed shall be " properly caulked, and in all other respects securely and properly constructed and well ventilated ;" and further provides " that the said apartment or space shall be kept free from goods and stores;" and subjects the master of any vessel to a penalty not exceeding 10?. for every infringement of the law in these respects. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the law is in numberless cases inoperative. Accordingly we find in the Report of a Society, formed in 1867, for Improving the Condition of Merchant Seamen,* under the heading of " Accommodation," the following statement:— " Accommodation for the crew may be found of every description, varying, of course, with different classes of ship; but there is no doubt that even in some large vessels the seamen's quarters are inexcusably bad: deficient in light, ventilation, space, and every sort of comfort; that sometimes the bulk-head is removed to accommodate cargo, and the forecastle thrown open to the hold, and thus in the case of some cargoes, viz., sugar, guano, &c., free entrance is given to most pestilential and foul-smelling vapours.

Sometimes cargo and stores are stowed in the forecastle, which is often too crowded, and, from leakage and general filth, frequently quite unfit for habitation. It is by no means uncommon for the only ventilation of the ship's hold to be a hatch opening into the forecastle. Even in well-found and ordered ships the chain cables often work through the forecastle," &c. In the » Published by Harrison and Sons, 59, Pall Mall, 1867.

same Report we also find accounts of meetings held by the merchant seamen at Sunderland, and Seaham, in which, amongst other grievances, they bitterly complain of the accommodation space on board merchant ships for the men, "as being insufficient in amount, badly ventilated, in most cases damp and wet from leaks in the upper deck, and always lumbered up with ship's stores,"— evidencing, they state " that the crew is, in these days, exposed to injury by sea water, to which, in days gone by, the owners of ships would not even expose their hemp cables and other ship's stores." We find also in the same publication a Report from Mr, W. Burroughs, Shipwright Surveyor to the Board of Trade, to nearly the same effect, after his officially visiting Sunderland and Seaham, especially to inquire as to the correctness of the statements in memorials of the seamen at those ports to the Government.

6, Evil association on shore.

This evil may appear the most difficult for which to provide a remedy, inasmuch as that when a seaman is on shore no one can prevent him from going where he will or doing what he pleases, so long as he does nothing that is illegal. Yet, after all, much might be done without coercion, by simply providing him with the means of escape from his worst enemies, and removing temptations from his path ; for in reality he is subjected to a system of terrorism as well as seduction from the moment of his stepping on shore until he again embarks; and he is as much entitled to the protection of the law against the human vultures and sharks who maintain their fulsome, pestiferous existences by preying on his very vitals, as the community in general is from the pickpockets and other rogues who infest our streets. At present, like the flying-fish, which, in its short flight to escape from its enemies in the deep, is pounced on by the birds of the air, the merchant seaman flies from discomfort, if not misery, on board his ship, into the very clutches of his relentless enemies on the land, from whom he is in a short time only too glad again to escape, even to return to the discomfort of his home afloat. Aware of the systematic spoliation to which our seamen were subjected, the Government of the day introduced six clauses in the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854 for their protection.

Clause 233 pronounces that wages due or accruing to any seaman or apprentice should not be subject to attachment or arrest of any court, and that all payments of wages to them should be valid, notwithstanding any previous sale or assignment of the same; and that no sale or assignment of wages or salvage made prior to its accruing should bind the party making it.

234. That no debt exceeding 5s. incurred after an engagement to serve should be recoverable until that service was completed.

235. That any party demanding of a seaman or apprentice payment for board or .edging beyond the period actually boarded or lodged, should be subject to a penalty not exceeding 101.

236. That any party having possession of money, documents, or effects of any seaman or apprentice, and not returning the same to the owner when required to do so, subject to any deduction justly due, should be liable to a penalty not exceeding 10Z., and be required to pay the value of the articles to their owner if not returned to him.

237. That any person going on board a vessel without permission of the master, before her arrival in dock or at place of discharge, should be subject to a penalty up to 20?.

238. Decrees that any person on board any ship, within twenty-four hours after her arrival at any port in the United Kingdom, soliciting any seaman to become a lodger at the house of any one letting lodgings for hire, or taking out of any such ship any effects of any seaman, except under his personal direction, and with the permission of the master, should be liable to a penalty up to 51.

Nevertheless, the crimps and other harpies, whose business it is to relieve the sailor of his money in the least possible time, effect their object, and, valuable as these restrictions are, other means must be adopted to defeat it.

The " Sailors' Homes," which are now established at all our larger ports, have already done a great deal in this direction, but they are only available to single men, or to married men apart from their families, whilst every effort is made by the proprietors of lodging-houses to entice seamen from them; and, unfortunately, they have not yet been made self-supporting. A most valuable supplement to them is suggested in the Report of the " Society for Improving the Condition of Seamen" in the shape of " Married Sailors' Homes," or " Family Lodging Houses for Married Seamen;" and the importance of the same was strongly urged on that Society by several of its members and correspondents. We think that such institutions, under judicious management and superintendence, would be a great boon to the respectable married seaman, and would induce many men to marry, and give up a reckless life. It has also been recommended that a seamen's institute and recreation ground should be established in the neighbourhood of all " Sailors' Homes," which would be a further advantage.

It has likewise been suggested that special I licenses should be granted to board and lodge seamen, such boarding and lodginghouses being under supervision, so that fraud or other misconduct on the part of those keeping them could be visited by withdrawal of the license.

It is also strongly recommended that seamen should be entitled to their pay and wages up to the day of their discharge, and that they should receive their wages, or, at least, a sufficient advance on them, from the master at the time of their discharge, as it is considered that the untold miseries to which they and their families are exposed from the crimping system are mainly attributable to the delay which arises between the discharge of crews and their payment. It has likewise been proposed that there should be a pay-clerk at every shipping-office, in whose presence all seamen should be paid.

Lastly, it is of undoubted importance that every class of persons who have hitherto preyed on sailors should be licensed, even to the porter who conveys his chest ashore, and who at present is generally feed by the crimp and lodging-house keeper, to bring it by persuasion or by force to his own den.

It may seem strange and anomalous to some persons, that a body of men, who have ever shown themselves capable of heroic deeds in their country's defence, and in no way deficient in general intelligence and common sense, should thus require to be guarded and protected and helped, as if they were so many children. We must, however, be content to grapple with facts as we find them; and if circumstances convert men into children, in some things, we must treat them as such.

We have now only to conclude onr remarks on this somewhat melancholy but most important subject We will do so by expressing the hope that not only our legislators, but the whole nation will awake to a sense of the danger, the discredit, and the sin of suffering this numerous and invaluable, yet, in some respects, helpless class of the community to deteriorate from day to day, until they are fast becoming a discredit alike to their country and themselves.

SHIPWRECKS. — The Statistical Committee of Lloyd's, to whom HENRY JEULA, Esq., acts as the able Hon. Secretary, have recently published an analysis of wrecks and casualties, in different parts of the world, during the year 1867 as compared with 1866. It results from their returns that the total number of casualties last year was 12,513, against 11,711 in 1866. The total losses were 2,343, of which 105 were steamers, in 1867, against 2,234, of which 115 were steamers, in 1866.

The cases in which the cargo was entirely lost numbered 1,168 last year and 1,946 in 1866. The loss of life in 1867 contrasts very favourably with that of the year preceding, the total being only 1,346 against 2,644 in 1866. The Committee, however, observe that the returns on this head are still most imperfect, the actual number being in excess of that given in the various tables.

Some more information is, however, given under this head than last year. The month in which the fewest casualties have occurred for the past ten years, so far as Lloyd's Loss Book was posted, is July, the heaviest being November. An elaborate geographical summary of the wrecks and casualties, arranged according to the voyages performed, shows that of the entire list of total losses, numbering last year 2,343, about 20 per cent, occurred in the British islands: while of the other sections, the heaviest—that which included the Baltic and the Gulf of Bothnia—contributed about 7 per cent. only. The Cape colonies, the Persian Gulf, Australia, Polynesia, California, and Greenland appear to have been almost blanks as regards total wrecks of foreign-going ships in 1867, although they supplied a few cases of constructive loss. In the British islands the number of vessels raised last year, after sinking, was 32, and in the rest of the world only 20. There were 5 cases of loss from piracy in 1867, and 18 in'the year preceding.