We are happy to find that the Steam-boat Bill is
not to be lowed to pass through the House of Commons quite so smoothly as its author imagined it would. The present is a most unfit mo- ment to legislate on the subject. There is a terror abroad respect- ing- the safety of steam-boats in general, and people may be in- duced to tolerate very foolish and contradictory enactments touch- ing those which ply on the Thames ; not because steam-boats on rivers are really dangerous, but because bad management has made steam-boats dangerous elsewhere. It may afford some notion of the reasoning powers of the advocates of the pending bill, to specify two of its provisions,—lst, steam-boats are not to proceed at a greater rate than six miles in the hour against tide ; 2nd, they are limited to three miles in the hour with tide. Now the tide at London Bridge runs six miles in the hour, or thereabouts. Either, therefore, a steam-boat is to stand stock still when the tide is against her, and to " back" at the rate of three miles when it is with her ; or she is to go twelve miles against tide and nine miles with it ;—and this by a bill for regulating the velocity of steam-boats! Oh, Alderman Wow) ! enlighten thy absolute wisdom by a weekly perusal of the Mechanics' Magazine.
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