A very enthusiastic meeting took place at Exeter Hall this
day week in support of Mr. Plimsoll's Billagainst unseaworthy ships. Lord Shaftesbury .made an eloquent,- perhaps too eloquent, speech on behalf of Mr. Plimsoll, and Mr. Plimsoll,-who was received with the utmost passion of enthusiasm,—and who-elicited, bythe way, as • great a demonstration in favour of Mr. Glad- stone when he -called him "the best Minister England ever had," —explained the measure we have elsewhere discussed, and narrated the origin of his campaign. He left London some years ago for Itetlear, in a steamer which was surveyed twice a year, and therefore was in good repair, and •encountered a, fearful storm, in which his wife had expected him to perish. He arrived safely, but the sympathy he and his wife felt with other women whose husbands had perished owing to the unseaworthiness of their ships, made him and his wife resolve that he would devote "himself and his influence,- his time and his money, his body and his soul, to the efforts he „was now making." It is evident that the English "enthusiasm of humanity" has been specially roused by this campaign of Mr. Plimsoll's. Not only does- the sailor always touch the English imagination, but the hideous picture of these "floating cons" has engraved itself as a singularly typical specimen of avaricious selfishness on the plain English conscience.
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