The important question of providing harbours of refuge on exposed parts of the coast, where natural harbours are not to be found, to which merchant vessels and fishing-boats could ran for safety in gales of wind, has once more cropped up, after having remained in abeyance for a long period.

In 1857 the attention of the House of Commons and of the Government having been urgently called to the need of harbours of refuge on various parts of the coast of the United Kingdom, where Nature had not provided them, a Select Committee was appointed to inquire into the subject In the autumn of 1858 a Royal Commission, composed of distin- guished practical men, naval and others, with Rear-Admiral James Hope as their Chairman, was nominated to complete the inquiry of the Select Committee, and authority was given to it, or to any three or more of its members, to visit and personally inspect such harbours and shores of the United Kingdom as they |; might deem advisable, and to examine ;and take evidence from all parties concerned.

Having visited all those parts of the coast where harbours of refuge had been proposed, and procured all the local in- formation regarding each that was obtain- able, they furnished their Report to Her Majesty on the 3rd March, 1859.

We published a summary of that Be- port, with comments on it, in the 37th Number of this Journal, July, 1860, and there would now be no advantage in repeating them, since the recommendations of the Report have not been carried into effect.

It will suffice to state that they decided to arrange the needs of the coast under two heads; under the first including harbours "required on such parts of the coast as, being much frequented, are with- out any adequate place of safety into which vessels can run if overtakes by storms/* and they quoted Holyhead, Kings- town, and Portland as instances of their great utility, and denominated them Harbours of Refuge.

Under the second head they placed those "rendered necessary for the pur- poses of saying life, by the entire want of other than tidal or bar harbours on an extensive line of coast, much exposed to heavy on-shore gales, and the most largely frequented by the class of shipping least capable, under such circumstances, of keeping off a lee shore." Harbours of this class they termed " Life Harbours." Their area and classification had refer- ence to the parties on whom the cost of such works should fall, which they ar- ranged under three heads:— 1st. Where there should be an entire or virtual absence of local interest at the place selected for the site of a harbour, and therefore where the benefit accruing from its construction would be confined to the passing trade—that there the benefit should be considered national, and the expense of its construction be solely de- frayed from the public funds, the cost of maintenance being met by a moderate due on the vessels frequenting it, or in default of the same, by an annual vote for the purpose.

2nd. Where there shall be local interests of considerable amount, and there- fore where the benefit from the construction of a harbour would be divided between the passing and the local trade— that the cost of construction should be defrayed partly by a grant and partly by private funds, the amount assigned to each being proportional to the benefit derived.

3rd. Where there should be a comparatively small amount of benefit conferred on the passing trade, and the local interests be very large, and the benefits to the passing trade be little more than incidental—that the benefit should be considered as purely local, and the expense be locally defrayed; but that, in some special cases, a loan might be granted on undoubted security, propor- tionate in amount to the degree of refuge derived by the passing trade.

The Commissioners then specified several places in England, Ireland, and Scotland where they recommended that new harbours should be made, or existing ones improved, and stated the amount which they proposed might be granted from the public fund, and that to be locally raised in each case. The total estimated cost of the proposed works was 3,990,000?., of which sum they recommended that 2,365,0002. should be defrayed from the public fund, and that 1,625,OOOZ. should be locally raised.

Amongst their recommendations was that of the formation of a National Harbour of Refuge at Filey, on the Yorkshire coast, at a cost of 800,000?., from the public fund, being solely for the benefit of the passing trade.

As stated above, the recommendations of the Royal Commission were not carried out, the exigencies of the public service and other pressing demands on the public purse requiring an indefinite postpone- ment of the question.

This important and national subject has, however, indirectly cropped up again through the necessity of finding suitable labour for our convicts, and has been prominently brought to the notice of the general public in a leading article in The Times, from which we extract the follow- ing passages:— " The approaching completion of the great public works upon which convicts have been employed for the last thirty years has brought before the Government, though in a greatly modified form, the problem which called for solution at the beginning of that period. It is necessary to find occupation which shall be healthy, useful, disciplinary, and suited to the conditions under which convict labour can alone be employed. It is in our favour in dealing) with the matter that the whole machinery is in working order and only raw material has to be sought. It is even more in our favour that the mass of convicts to be dealt with is far smaller than even sanguine reformers ventured to hope in 1850. Yet the question is not altogether simple, even as things are. Though there is abundance of work waiting to be done which at the first glance seems appropriate enough for the employment of prisoners, our choice is limited in practice by disciplinary and economic j considerations. The work must be in a locality where a convict establishment can be set up without risk either to the public or to the management of the prisoners. It must be ex- tensive enough to give continuous employment to a considerable body of men for a number of years; and it ought to be of national utility, and of a kind which would not pay if undertaken in any other way. A committee was appointed to consider the subject, and its report, with appendices, maps, and minutes of evidence, has recently been published. From these it appears that the schemes submitted to it fur the employment of prisoners may, with one or two exceptions, be classed under two heads, the construction of harbours of refuge, and the reclamation of land.

"At present, however, there is no pressing need to attempt work of the last named kind.

There are two large schemes of harbour construction, each of which completely fulfils the conditions of convict employment. One is the throwing out of large breakwaters at Dover to form, with the existing Admiralty Pier, a Harbour suitable for the use of the navy, as well as of ships seeking shelter from stress of weather in the Channel. There is suitable ground behind the castle for the erection of the necessary prison buildings, and there are besides considerable local funds available as contributions to the cost of the undertaking.

" On behalf of the Dover scheme it is urged that a harbour is called for not only for naval purposes, but for the accommodation of the great and growing Continental commerce. Mo- dern improvements render it more and more important that there should be some coaling station between Sheerness and Portsmouth for the fleet, while a new port of embarcation for troops is also loudly called for by the great inconvenience and delay caused by the use of the existing dockyards for this purpose.

" The other great project is the construction of a large harbour of refuge at Filey, on the York- shire coast. This is even better adapted than Dover for the purposes of a convict settlement, and there can be no question of the utility of a harbour on that exposed and dangerous coast.

There is no shelter for vessels from the Humber on one side to the Tyne on the other; while there is no port in which we could concentrate a fleet for a yet greater distance. Yet it may be fairly urged that steam has so far altered the conditions of warfare, and political changes those of the balance of power in Europe, that a strategical centre of the kind is urgently needed on a portion of our coast within three hundred miles of the entrance to the Baltic. A stronger argument for a harbour at Filey is, however, the unprotected condition of the large fishing population of the East Coast, and the very large : percentage of wrecks that occur within a radius of sixty miles. Both the Dover and Filey harbours are needed, both are truly national undertakings both satisfy the conditions of convict labour, and neither has any chance of being made by private enterprise. There appear to be good reasons, therefore, why both should be constructed." We entirely agree with the above re- marks of the Times. We presume that few persons will dispute the desirability of employing our convicts on some useful national work, both on the ground that they should make gone return for the expense incurred by their country in protecting itself from their criminal propensities, and even preserving themselves from the greater misery which no occupation but brooding over their lot would, infallibly, entail on them. We also think that no more suitable and useful sphere of employment could be selected, now that the great harbours at Holy head and Portland on our western and south coasts are completed, than the formation of two equally great and important works on the east coast of England; one of them at Filey for the northern part, and the other at Dover, or wherever might be considered the most suitable place in the southern part of the east coast.