[249] This Bill consolidated all previous Acts; but from its dimensions, or some other cause, it has not yet passed, though frequently presented to the House of Commons for consideration.
[250] Mr. Samuel Plimsoll was first returned to Parliament in December, 1868, as one of the members for the town of Derby, which he had unsuccessfully contested three years previously. In the ‘Parliamentary Companion’ he is described as a “coal-merchant,” and author of various pamphlets on the coal trade, and on the ‘Rights of Workmen,’ and of a ‘Plan to have Fatherless and Motherless Children cared for instead of being consigned to the Workhouse.’
[251] This Bill contained 696 clauses, and replaced 90 Acts or parts of Acts.
[252] See Parl. Paper, C. 287, 1871.
[253] Merchant Shipping Act, 34 & 35 Vict. cap. 110. “Unseaworthy Ships.”
[254] It was entitled ‘Our Seamen: an Appeal by Samuel Plimsoll, M.P.,’ and was “dedicated to the Lady Gracious and Kind who seeing a labourer working in the rain sent him her rug to wrap about his shoulders.” Virtue and Co., Ivy Lane, London.
[255] See ‘Our Seamen,’ pp. 11, 12.
[256] ‘Our Seamen,’ p. 14.
[257] See ante, [p. 318], note.
[258] It may not now be the case, but I have known a chain cable, made of the best iron, and it would only be iron of the best description which could stand such a strain, stretched from 150 fathoms, its length when manufactured, to 155 fathoms after it had passed through the testing-machine. Such an enormous strain must injure the fibre of the iron, and, thereby, its elasticity, even though most of this stretch would probably be due to the links fitting closer into each other, and the actual stretch of the iron itself only a small portion of the whole. But in either case the elasticity of the fibre would most likely be injured, perhaps destroyed.