WE lament to announce the death of the Right Hon. Sir Stephen Cave, P.O., G.C.B., Paymaster-General and Judge Advocate- General in the late Government, and member for Shoreham from 1859 until the late general election. For some years Sir Stephen had been suffering from a painful illness. Sir Stephen Cave was the eldest son of the late Mr. Daniel Cave, J.P., of Cleve Hill, near Bristol.

He was born in December, 1820, and educated at Harrow School and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1843 (second class in classics), and proceeded to his M.A. degree in 1846.

The same year he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple, when he chose the Western Circuit, but did not apparently practise. His parliamentary career com- menced in 1859, when he was elected M.P. for Shoreham. In 1862 he suc- ceeded in passing a Bill to Amend the Law relating to Polling Places, and in 1866 one to Amend the Law in reference to the Assessment of Mines. In July of the last-named year he was offered and ac- cepted the post of Paymaster-General and Vice-President of the Board of Trade in the third administration of Lord Derby, upon the acceptance of which office he was sworn a member of the Privy Council.

He remained in office till the resignation of the Disraeli Ministry, in December, 1868, having, during the period of his official tenure of the post, acted in 1866-7 as Chief Commissioner in Paris for nego- tiating the revision of the French Fishery Conventions of August, 1839, and May, 1843. While out of office the right hon. gentleman again devoted himself to measures of useful legislation, and suc- ceeded in passing, in 1870, a Bill to Amend the Law of Life Assurance, and in the following year a Bill to Amend the Laws relating to the Investment of Trust Funds; and when, in February, 1874, the second administration of Mr. Disraeli was formed, he again accepted the post of Paymaster-General, combined with that of Judge Advocate-General. The latter office he, however, resigned in December, 1875, when he was sent on a special mission to Egypt, in response to a request from the late Khedive of Egypt to the British Government to provide him with some experienced European financier to effect a thorough reform in the finances of the country, which were then in a very critical state. Mr. Cave, accompanied by Colonel Stokes, B.E., was accordingly despatched to Egypt. He afterwards in- formed the writer of this brief memoir that he had never recovered from the effects of the fever he contracted on this mission. Sir Stephen married, in 1852, Emma Jane, daughter of the late Rev. Wm. Smyth. M.A., of Elkington Hall, Louth, and Prebendary of Lincoln. Sir Stephen was the author of "A Few Words on the Encouragement given to Slavery and the Slave Trade by recent Measures, and chiefly by the Sugar Bill of 1846;" of "Prevention and Reforma- tion: the Duty of the State or of Indi- viduals? with some account of a Refor- matory Institution;" of an essay " On the Distinctive Principles of Punishment and Reformation," and of papers relating to free labour and the slave trade, with a corrected report of the debate in the House of Commons on the resolutions proposed by Mr. Cave for the more effectual sup- pression of the African slave trade. He was formerly a director of the Bank of England and of the London and St.

Katharine Dock Company, and was a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant for the county of Gloucester, a magistrate for Sussex, a commissioner of lieutenancy for the City of London, president of the West India Committee, and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, of the Zoo- logical Society, and of the Society of Arts.

Sir Stephen was only recently created a Knight Grand Cross of the Bath. He took considerable interest in the welfare of the NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION, both as a member of its Committee of Management and as one of its Trustees. We believe he spoke for the last time in public at its annual meeting of 1879, and his eloquent and animated speech on the occasion, while he was evidently labouring under great sufferings, excited much attention. His remarks were so cogent and appropriate that we now publish them. He said:— " It becomes my duty to move the adoption of the Report which you have just heard read. As repre- senting in Parliament a mercantile naval consti- tuency, I am deeply sensible of the great advantage to our naval and seafaring population of this noble Institution. One cannot help regretting that some institution of this kind had not been established at a very much earlier date, when we think of the number of valuable lives which in this country alone have been lost for want of proper means for saving life in cases of shipwreck. From the time when the ' White Ship' went down with the royal prince on board many centuries ago, up to the beginning of the present century, there was not only no adequate means for saving life, but on the contrary those unhappy sailors and passengers who escaped the fury of the sea and found themselves on shore, ran, probably, a still greater risk from the natives of the different shores of this country than they did when they were tossing about on the sea itself. (Hear, hear.) And on hearing it stated in the Report that a Life-boat was going to be placed on the coast of Cornwall, one can hardly help thinking of the very great change that has taken place in modern times. We know that up to the end of the last century Cornwall was the worst place for wrecking on the whole coasts of the United Kingdom. From the time when Sir Cloudesley Shovel, with all his fleet, went on shore on the Scilly Isles, and where it is supposed that he was murdered by the islanders for the sake of his gold watch, what a difference there is up to this time, when we hear of life-boats being placed | at every part on the coasts of Cornwall, and where the noblest of services in saving life are constantly rendered, and no better crews can there be found to man them than the hardy Cornishmen them- | selves! (Cheers.) I believe that, besides the enormous fleet of life-boats which have been placed upon our shores, we have sent life- boats to foreign countries, and to the colonies— very few, but still enough to serve as specimens of what has been done in this country to induce other countries, if possible, to supplement our exertions by institutions of a similar character to the Life-boat Institution. But even if that was not so, and even if we were to supply Life-boats for foreign parts and to the colonies, I believe that we should be doing very much greater benefit to ourselves thau to the inhabitants of those countries, because anybody who knows anything of the statistics of the British Mercantile Marine knows how enormously it outnumbers that of foreign countries. We may therefore be assured that whenever there is a storm in any part of the world, our sailors form the greater number of the people whose lives are risked and lost. (Hear, hear.) I remember some years ago going through the Suez Canal from end to end. We met seventeen large steamers, and of those seventeen large steamers all but two were British. I just mention that to show that any Life-boat placed in any part of the world, either by our exertion or by other people following our example, is more likely to save the lives of English sailors than the lives of sailors belonging to any other country in the world. Now we have had a great deal said of late years about the difficulty of managing our Charities properly.

We are told that charity creates half the evil which it relieves, but does not relieve half the evil which it creates. We have had a great many letters in the newspapers to that effect from Sir Charles Trevelyan, and from many others who have given their attention to these subjects. I must say that I very much agree with them.

And even our hospitals have been called in question, because it is said that people are glad to stay as long as they can in a hospital, not only to get cured, but to get the better food and the better accommodation which they have in those hospitals, compared with what they get at home. And we know what malin- gering means. Any soldier or sailor here knows what malingering mean's. I remember that while I was in Egypt, of my crew on the Nile there was hardly anybody who had two eyes or two forefingers. They got rid of them in order to try to escape service in the army or the navy.

But I never heard of anybody trying to drown himself for the sake of being saved by the Life- boats of the Institution; so that if there is an institution against which hardly anything can be said, it is such an Institution as THE NATIONAL LIFE-BOAT INSTITUTION. What are we doing in a country like this ? When we are always at war we want something to fill up the gaps of the population. Well, it is something that we save six hundred or eight hundred or a thousand of the adult population in the course of the year, to fill up those gaps which have been made by war and other casualties elsewhere. I think that is some- thing to be said in favour of an institution of this kind. And then, besides that, though we know that numbers of sailors every year go to the bottom of the sea and lie, as it has been said, 'where pearls lie deep,' yet the disaster is not confined to themselves. We must recollect that almost the whole of these men are bread-winners.

They are supporting families elsewhere, and if these families lose their bread-winners and are not supported, what happens ? They come upon the community at large. There is no doubt that this Institution is nobly supported, but we have on the other side a very large expenditure; and so it must be. We cannot get on without a very large expenditure. This is not a service that can be stinted. Unless we keep our Life-boats in first-rate order, and reward people well, we cannot get our Life-boats gallantly and ably manned.

And a very few instances of boats being sent out in an unseaworthy state from this Institution would have so bad an effect that it would be almost impossible to get the boats manned, economy to give rewards freely, and to spend freely, to keep her fleet in a state of the greatest efficiency. We find that the newspaper press, which is most discerning, is ever ready to help forward this, like every other good and National cause. We may, however, not always have such encouragement and such ener- getic officers as we now possess ; and therefore it is of the greatest importance that we should make hay while the sun shines, and that we should, if we possibly can, get a capital as well as an income, so that if the interest of the public in this Institution should to a certain extent be dimi- nished, I do not think its noble work can ever fade away; but still, should it diminish at all, we should have something to fall back upon—some- thing to put by for a rainy day—so that we may be able to carry on our operations by the side of the income which we are now obtaining from the generosity of the public. (Cheers.)".