The Merchant Shipping Bill has been struggling slowly through Committee
this week, the Government having shown, as usual, the greatest vacillation, and declared only on Thursday, through the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that they hoped they saw a way of dealing with foreign shipping entering our ports so as to make it amenable to the same principle as our own, but that the clause would require further consideration. The Colonial Office is apparently at war with the Board of Trade as to the true prin- ciple of the Bill, and this even in the very agony of Committee. The Government are prepared to adopt the Canadian principle as to deck-loading for ships coming from the Atlantic, where it is already at work, but not to adopt it for ships coming from Sweden and Norway, where it would be of great use. Of course, in cases of difficulty, the Government applies "its majority,"' and beats the Opposition. But a more melancholy spectacle than its efforts to legislate on the theory of holding shipowners " responsible " has not been seen for many Sessions. It reminds us of Carlyle's description of Coleridge's walking,—a constant vacillation of mind as to the aide of the path on which he would set his foot.
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