Report of a Speech Delivered at Leeds, Sunday, March 16.

(From the Times of March 17th, 1873.)

Mr. Plimsoll, M.P., happening to be in Leeds on the 16th, and accidentally observing on the walls the announcement that a sermon would be delivered in the amphitheatre by a local minister, attended the gathering, and at the close was invited to speak. After the subsidence of the ringing cheers which greeted him on stepping to the front of the stage,

Mr. Plimsoll said if it was right to lift from a pit a horse or an ass which had fallen into it on the Sabbath day, he thought it was also right that, although it was the Sabbath day, he should take the opportunity of saying a word or two on the subject which he took for granted had brought the audience together that afternoon. An hour and a half before he was not at all aware of the meeting. Late last night he reached Leeds to fulfil an engagement upon the subject he supposed they had then in their minds, and as he went to Woodhouse Lane Cemetery that afternoon to visit the grave of a friend who was laid there seven-and-twenty years ago, he saw "Rotten Ships!" "Rotten Ships!" "Rotten Ships!" staring at him upon the walls, so he thought he would turn in and hear what was to be said upon that subject, and take part, if possible, in the meeting. That was the secret of his presence among them. He came the previous night, and intended returning at half-past ten on Monday morning; but he thought he should like to say a word or two to the people of Leeds before he went away, seeing that they were assembled to discuss a subject in which he took so much interest, and seeing also that some time ago he was prevented from coming to Leeds when he should have been glad to have done so. He wanted the Leeds people to help the London people to make it impossible for the Government to let this Session of Parliament go by without legislating on behalf of our sailors. Unless a very strong public effort was made through the length and breadth of the land, Parliament would separate without doing anything but appoint a Commission. A Commission was a good thing, and he hoped its work would be well done; but the country could not afford to wait three years longer. Some measures must be taken in the meantime to secure the safety of our sailors. Surely they need not wait for a Commission to say that a ship that needed repair or that was overloaded should not put to sea? Every day, and page 30 almost every hour of every day, brought to him cases of a most heartrending character. Not having been aware of the meeting, he had not any speech prepared, but while Mr. Adey had been speaking he had jotted down one or two cases that had been brought under his notice within the last eight days. On Saturday week he had a letter from a seaport town in the north of Scotland, in which it was stated that an old ship had been sailing from that port longer than anybody that lived there could tell, and that she ought to have been broken up for firewood any time during the last twenty years. It was so notoriously unseaworthy that at last the owner could not get any man to go aboard of her. The captain himself stuck to her because he was an old man and had a large family, and the choice for him was that or destitution. He had sailed so many years in her, and had always escaped, that he thought he would risk it. The captain and owners put their heads together, and what did they do? After they found they could not get men to sail in her, they actually sent the ship to sea with a crew of young boys, the eldest of whom was not more than seventeen, and she went to the bottom and drowned them all. (Cries of "Shame.") What did the audience call that? He called it murder. (Loud cheers.) He was asked to make inquiries, and he took the letter to a gentleman, who assisted him, and replied, "Be sure of this, the matter will be inquired into." He then telegraphed to Hull, where they had a trusty messenger, who travelled for him and obtained him information. "Go right away to this place, make inquiry, and let me know if the ship was lost and these lads were drowned," and the man went and was now pursuing an investigation into the case. Another thing that happened during the last week was this—He saw a gentleman driving a pair of very fine horses with a smart groom behind him in the West-end of London. He knew something about the gentleman, and he looked at him as he went by and thought rather more than he would tell them just then. (A laugh.) The day after that he got a letter from the north-west. What did they think it said. It told him that one of that man's ships had just come to port so grossly overladen that if she had the least heavy weather she and all her crew must have gone to the bottom. (Cheers.) And now another instance. A ship, the name of which he had on the piece of paper he held in his hand, sailed from a port so overladen that the seamen shortly afterwards put into port and refused to work her. They were taken before the magistrates, and the magistrates sentenced each of them to six weeks' imprisonment. Another crew was obtained, put on board the same ship, and she went to sea the day after. On the day after that she put into Falmouth, the second crew refused to go on the voyage, and they were sent to prison, one and all, for three months. Then a third crew was mustered and put on board, and the vessel was again sent to sea. While the first and second crews were still in gaol, the ship went down, and the third crew was drowned. (Cries of "Shame.") He had a letter from the governor of a gaol only last week. Governors of gaols were not very tenderhearted men. (Laughter.) They were not very sentimental, and they were very much given to think that everybody who came under their charge came for some very good reason, and that they were not, therefore, entitled to any special marks of kindness or approbation. But this governor of a county gaol, page 31 who was a commander in the Royal Navy before he was made governor, wrote to him, enclosing a copy of a letter written by two young men, who were in the gaol. The letter was too long to read to the meeting, but he would tell them what the governor said. He told him that the two young men were as respectable and well-behaved as ever he saw in his life, and that they were part of a crew who had been sent to gaol for not going to sea, and that they were writing to their parents in the greatest distress, fearing the shock it would be to the minds of those respectable people to know that their sons were in gaol. Mr. Plimsoll said a late captain in the Royal Navy and present governor of a county gaol told him it was literally true that many of the best of our fellow countrymen had only to choose between death by drowning and the common gaol, and he begged him to go on and persevere in what he was doing. (Cheers.) Now, he asked the working-men of Leeds if they would stand that sort of thing any longer. (General cries of "No, no.") See, then, that they formed a committee to co-operate with the committee which was being formed in London. (Cheers.) He did not know what would be the mode of operation of the London committee, but he should propose to them that every town in England should depute one or more persons to wait upon Mr. Gladstone before the end of the month and let him know unmistakably that the will of the people of England was that they would not give up until their fellow-subjects at sea enjoyed the some protection which they gave to their factory hands and their miners. (Loud cheers.) If the people of Leeds lent a helping hand in the movement, they would never regret it, the recollection would remain with them until their dying day; it would be a solace when flesh and heart failed because of physical prostration and weakness; it would be with them sustaining their sinking spirits even to the confines of an eternal world, and would precede them even into that world, and plead for them with Him who said: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." (Loud and prolonged cheers.)