Yarmouth galley, and killed some of her men.

The evil effects of this confusion of might with right, the anxiety occasioned by this constant warfare, and by these petty feuds, lingered longer on sea than on land; and kept the morals of the seafaring population of the coasts at the lowest ebb; and as one consequence, the plundering of vessels wrecked on the shores was in all parts of Europe carried on with as ruthless a hand, as was piracy and privateering afloat.

It may be somewhat interesting to consider the gradual progress of legislation with reference to this very terrible system and crime of wrecking; and while doing so, we shall receive further proof of how the rough mastery of the strong over the weak crept into the Laws, and how full a development it had in such laws, as especially related to wrecks and wreckage.

It is hard in the present day to conceive how, in the name of any government making claim to the administration of justice, such a law could have been passed as that which existed prior to Henry I., which gave the king complete possession of all wrecked property: ownership on the part of the original possessor was supposed to have been lost by the action of the sea. Whether the law originated in that strong instinct for the appropriation of unconsidered trifles, which is rather a snare to all governments, or whether it was found necessary to make the king the owner of wreckage, in order to lessen the temptation to cause vessels to be wrecked, and their crews murdered for the sake of pillage, no unfrequent occurrence in those days, however it was, the law existed, and the shipwrecked merchant might come struggling ashore upon a broken spar, and find the coast strewn with scattered but still valuable goods, so lately his, but now by law his no longer, any more than they belonged to the half dozen rude fishermen who stood watching the torn wreck, and dispersed cargo being wave-lifted high upon the beach.

Henry I., whose declining years were years of tender and deep sadness, on account of his own losses at sea, was somewhat more compassionate in his dealings with the unfortunate by shipwreck.

He decreed that a wreck or wrecked goods should not be considered lost to the owner, or become the property of the Crown, if any man escaped from the wreck with life to the shore.

Henry II. made a feeble enlargement of this scant degree of mercy—he expanded this saving clause, so that if either man or beast came ashore alive, the wreck and goods should still be considered as belonging to the original possessors; but failing this, although the owner should be known beyond all possibility of doubt, all the saved property should belong to the king; so that in those old days, if a cat was supposed to have nine lives, it was quite sufficient to account for its being for so long a popular institution on board ship; for even a cat washing ashore, would become the owner's title-deeds to all of his property that the sea had spared.

Richard I. could be generous in things small as well as great; he could act nobly upon principle as well as upon impulse; it must have been, indeed, only natural to his open unselfish nature and high courage, to spurn the idea of robbing the robbed, of making the victim of the sea's destructive power the further victim of a king's greed; he was prepared to give his laws of chivalry a wide interpretation, and let them ordain succour for the distressed by the rage of waters, as well as for the distressed by the rage of men.

And so when about to take part in the third crusade, King Richard decreed, "For the love of God, and the health of his own soul, and the souls of his ancestors and successors, kings of England.

"That all persons escaping alive from a wreck should retain their goods; that wreck or wreckage should only be considered the property of the king when neither an owner, nor the heirs of a late owner, could be found for it."

For several centuries all European nations had for the foundation of their maritime laws, a certain code, called the Code of Oleron.

There is the usual veil of historical uncertainty clouding the origin of these laws, for while some authorities declare that Richard I. had nothing to do with them, others declare that they were completed and promulgated by Richard, at the Isle of Oleron, as he was returning from one of his crusades, and that they had first and especial reference to the customs on the coasts of some of his continental domains.

The Laws of Oleron contain thirty-seven articles, and make very terrible statements as to the system of wrecking, which in those days disgraced the then civilized nations of the earth, while they show also, that if sinners were then prepared to sin with a high hand, that the authorities were prepared with no less energy to inflict punishment for crime.

Some of the extracts from these laws are as utter darkness compared with light, when you read them beside extracts from the Life-boat journals of the present day, suggesting as they do the customs of the people as regards wrecking, and the scant mercy that was shown to the shipwrecked.

Consider, for instance, the picture as given in the following extracts from the old laws of Oleron:—

"An accursed custom prevailing in some parts, inasmuch as a third or fourth part of the wrecks that come ashore belong to the lord of the manor, where the wrecks take place, and that pilots for profit from these lords, and from the wrecks, like faithless and treacherous villains, do purposely run the ships under their care upon the rocks."

The Code declares, that the lords, and all who assist in plundering the wreck shall be accursed, excommunicated, and punished as robbers. "That all false pilots shall suffer a most rigorous and merciless death, and be hung on high gibbets."

"The wicked lords are to be tied to a post in the middle of their own houses, which shall be set on fire at all four corners, and burnt with all that shall be therein; the goods being first confiscated for the benefit of the persons injured; and the site of the houses shall be converted into places for the sale of hogs and swine."

But if this threat of burning the said wicked lords, and the wholesale confiscation and destruction of their houses and properties, had not sufficient terrors to control such hardened sinners, and if they, or others, were prepared to add murder to robbery, then the laws enacted—

"If people, more barbarous, cruel, and inhuman than mad dogs, murdered shipwrecked folk, they were to be plunged into the sea until half dead, and then drawn out and stoned to death."

Railway directors and others would scarcely like the enforcement of laws parallel to those which dealt with the carelessness of Pilots; which provided, "That if negligence on the part of the Pilot caused shipwreck, he was to make good out of his own means the losses sustained, and if his means were not sufficient, then he should lose his head;" it was meekly suggested; "that some care should be taken by the master and mariners," possibly as much for their own sakes as for the sake of the unfortunate pilot. "That they should be persuaded that the man had not the means to make good the loss, before they cut off his head."

The preamble of an Act of Parliament is generally the summary of the arguments for the necessity of the Bill.

The preamble of a Bill for the repression of crime, may be therefore taken as the expression of the national conviction, that such crimes exist at the time.

If so, during the reign of George II. human nature did not show itself to be one whit better than in earlier days, still were men equally capable of cruel selfishness and wrong, although civilization had done much to curb the