captains, and the increase of refuge
harbours, are the chief sources of this security. The old ignorance, in
which a degree or two of latitude more or less was a light error in a
ship's reckoning, is now unheard of, and they who command merchant-ships
in our day are a very well informed and superior order of men. With
reference to the conduct and capacity of these captains, this 'Wreck
Register,' is a very instructive publication. If, for instance, you
find that Captain Brace, who was wrecked on the Azores in '52, was again
waterlogged at sea in '61, and ran into an iceberg off Newfoundland
in '62, you begin, mayhap unfairly, to couple him too closely with
disaster, and you turn to the inquest over his calamities to see what
estimate was formed of his conduct. You learn, possibly, that in
one case he was admonished to more caution; in another, honourably
acquitted; and in the last instance smartly reprimanded, and his
certificate suspended for six months or a year. Now, though you have
never heard of Captain Brace in your life, nor are probably likely to
encounter him on sea or land, you cannot avoid a certain sense of relief
at the thought that so unlucky a commander, to say the least of it,
is not likely for a while to imperil more lives, and that the warning
impressed by his fate will also be a salutary lesson to many others.

It was in reflecting over this system of inquiry and sentence, that
it occurred to me what to admirable thing it would be to introduce
the 'Wreck Register' into politics, and to have a yearly record of all
parliamentary shipwrecks; all the bills that foundered, the motions that
were stranded, the amendments lost in a fog!--to be able to look back
and reflect over the causes of these disasters, investigating patiently
how and why and where they happened, and asking ourselves, Have we
any better security for the future? are we better acquainted with the
currents, the soundings, or the headlands? and, above all, what amount
of blame, if any, is attributable to the commander?

If we find, for instance, that the barque Young Reform, no matter how
carefully fitted out for sea--new sheathed and coppered, with bran-new
canvass, and a very likely crew on board--never leaves the port that
she does not come back crippled; and that old and experienced captains,
however confidently they may take the command at first, frankly own that
they'll never put foot in her again, you very naturally begin to suspect