ANNIVERSARY MEETING.

The Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the British and Foreign Sailors' Society was held on Tuesday evening, May 14th, at the London Tavern, and was very numerously and respectably attended. The Hon. W. F. COWPER, M.P., one of the Lords of the Admiralty, and Vice-President of the Society, occupied the place of the President, the Right Hon. the EARL OF DUCIE, whose attendance was forbidden by his medical attendant.

The Rev. J. BIGWOOD having opened the meeting with prayer,

The CHAIRMAN rose and said--Ladies and gentlemen, I fear it will be a great disappointment to this meeting that it is not presided over by that noble lord (Earl Ducie) who takes such a deep interest in the affairs of the Society, and who was announced to be present on this occasion. I know that no one can feel a greater disappointment than he does himself; and nothing but severe illness would have prevented him from attending. At his request I have come to occupy his place, and to express to you the great disappointment he feels at not being able to preside over this meeting. I regret to say, that not being so well acquainted with the operations of this Society as others, I shall not be able to say anything that can interest you upon this subject; but, in common with all who know the scope and object of this Society, I could not but feel such a warm interest in it as to induce me at once to come, even at this short notice, although I am afraid that other business will prevent my remaining till the end of the proceedings. It seems that the object of your Society is to give spiritual instruction to a class of the community who, I think, are peculiarly in need of help of that description. The circumstances in which the seamen of our mercantile marine are placed are peculiarly unfavourable for that degree of spiritual instruction, and those means of spiritual improvement which other classes in the community possess. The fact of their being sent out upon the high seas, and at a distance from parish churches, and from schools, with little or no access to books, shows how few spiritual advantages they would possess but for the aid of this Society. With seamen, I believe, we must deal as with a class; they have their peculiar feelings and prejudices; and even when on shore, and away from sea-associations, they cling closely together. I have known cases in which they have felt that if they were to go into our ordinary places of worship, they would be going where they had no business-a feeling which is entirely removed when they go into a church filled with their own comrades and persons in the same occupation in life. I think there is no class of the community who, in this respect, more require assistance than the seamen ; and if so, this Society has strong claims amongst the many associations which are continually urging their claims upon us. Certainly, there are peculiar reasons why every Englishman should sympathise with sailors as a class-why no Briton should be indifferent to that profession which constitutes the peculiar pre-eminence of this country, which has given us our maritime superiority, given us the wealth that is so marvellously concentrated in this small island, and enabled our commerce to spread its ramifications over every part of the globe. (Cheers.) How much of the great destiny which Providence has intended this nation to fulfil may be owing to the fact of our maritime power? It is to the hardihood, to the energy, and to the zeal of our seamen that we are enabled, by English influence, to embrace every quarter of the globe-by which the name of England, its arts, its sciences, and its civilisation are known to almost every savage tribe throughout the world, and by which, also, missionary efforts have been so generally spread. Thus there is a peculiar reason why we should endeavour to leaven the seamen of England with a spirit of true Christianity. You can scarcely read an account of missionary efforts in which it does not appear that one of the drawbacks has been the very imperfect practice of Christianity among the seamen who come in contact with the natives. The natives are constantly comparing the practice which they see among the seamen who land

upon their shores with the teaching and professions of the missionaries who talk to them; and when they see the lamentable contrast between the two, they are apt to think that this Christianity, which sounds so well to the ear, cannot be so valuable in reality; and they say, How are we to carry it out, if the white men, with all their civilisation, and power, and knowledge, are unable to do it themselves?” (Hear, hear.) So that in your efforts on behalf of your maritime fellow-subjects, you are indirectly facilitating missionary enterprise; for if the practice of Christianity were more clearly seen among the seamen who visit distant parts, you may be sure that its influence would be powerfully and palpably felt upon the minds of the natives whom they visit. (Applause.)

The Rev. EDWARD MUSCUTT then read the Annual Report of the Society; and Mr. FIELDWICK, Co-secretary, read the financial statement for the year.

The Rev. GEORGE SMITH moved the first resolution

"That this meeting rejoices to hear of the successes which have attended the operations of the Society during the past year, and regards these tokens of the Divine benediction as additional incentives to renewed and enlarged exertions on its behalf."

He said: I have sat on this platform, Sir, to-night, and heard with peculiar pleasure the varied, the graphic, and the interesting representations that have been made of the condition of seamen, and of the constitution and operations of your Society. and of the large amount of good that, under God, has been effected by it; and I feel inclined to be thankful to Him on your behalf, and to pledge you that you will take courage and go forward. It has come out incidentally, Sir, in the report which has been read, that there is in yonder river-in the mighty Thames-a river vastly important to England and to the whole world-a ship lying, called the Dreadnought. You, Sir, as a Lord of the Admiralty, would be well aware of the existence of that ship; but there may be some in this auditory who know not the design for which it is lying on that river. I called it a mighty river: London is very dependent upon it; England is very dependent upon it; the world itself is very dependent on the Thames. We are told, in the pages of history, that upon one occasion that clever and gifted woman, Queen Elizabeth, who threatened to make and unmake bishops as she liked, and to upset or build up a corporation as she chose, told the corporation of London that if the citizens did not act in harmony with her will, she would take the Court away from London. But the noble, Anglo-Saxon, sturdy corporators of that day said: "Please your majesty, will you leave the Thames behind you? If you leave that, we think we can do without a Court." (Hear and laughter.) So it has been found in all ages. If you leave a great river in the midst of a people, that people can well do without a Court, if the Court in its anger and its pride should attempt to do without the people. But that great river has a large number of attractive objects upon it, but none in my judgment more attractive or more interesting than that ship called the Dreadnought. I am not acquainted with her history; I do not know when her keel was laid down; I am not aware in what battles she fought; but I apprehend the name of the ship indicates the courage of the men who have manned her. Now that she has done her work in the way of war, she is brought back to float upon the river Thames-and there stands, or there sits, or there reposes, not scattering abroad the implements of war and destruction, but appearing as a hospital, intended, Sir, as you are aware, to receive the invalid, the diseased, the afflicted of all countries, of all languages, at all times, in any hour of the day, or any hour of the night, on the one simple plea that there is want and misery and woe on the part of the applicant, and that that applicant is a sailor. Now, Sir, what the Dreadnought is to man in his physical condition, I hold your Society to be to man in his moral and intellectual and spiritual condition. (Cheers.) I know it has been doubted at times whether it is proper to set up separate institutions with a view to benefiting separate classes of the community, and yet we find people acting upon that principle in every direction. You find, in certain parts of London, churches fitted up to meet the taste and peculiarities of the people. Some are inclined to Puseyism, and you find places of worship fitted up and adapted for such people. Others like what is supposed to be the plain and unadulterated Gospel preached by Calvin and others, and you find churches erected for these; and so with other classes of the community. I think, Sir, there is very much reason and propriety in setting up an institution for the benefit of the British seamen who navigate our oceans, and are found from time to time entering our ports. I do not envy that man's mind-I do not wish to copy the emotion of that heart, that could

be cold and indifferent, and unaffected by the representations that have been made in that very comprehensive and telling report. I am aware that reports are some. times thought to be very dull and uninteresting things, but it appears to me that that report is a pre-eminently interesting and important one. It has brought before you, in a striking point of view, the wants of the people on whose behalf we are met together to-night, and the number of the people on whose behalf we plead. The numbers of these men are so very important and striking that the subject is redeemed from all that would be contemptible and insignificant by the mere con. templation of the fact that there are myriads of our fellow-men who get their bread by the peril of their lives. If one class of people could be found out, if one class of the community could be selected, quite sufficient to fill this assembly, if a number of youthful, intelligent, accountable, immortal beings could be brought together, I apprehend we should feel that on their behalf it would be right to put forth any amount of effort to do them good. But just think of the large number of persons employed in the mercantile marine of Great Britain. They are not to be counted by units, or by hundreds, or by thousands, but by hundreds of thousands. These men with their wives, for many of them are married, and with their children, for many of them are parents, have a strong claim, I think, upon our sympathy and our help. Then, Sir, it must be remembered that the relation of their employment to this entire country is vastly important. I might look around this country-I might go into the habitations of the great, into the mansions of our nobles, into the palaces of our princes, and I might feel that it would be very possible to do without a large number of things that we have. We might, for instance, do without beautiful furniture, without fine pictures, without poetry; I confess I should not like to do without them, for I think they have all very much to do with our intellectual and moral improvement. But I do feel that we might do without them--that we might be reduced to a condition in which we might say, "Well, let the poet go aside if you please; let him go into the desert and sing his madrigals to the rocks and the woods. We do not particularly care about him." We might lay aside the " Sacred Harmonic," and all the things that are turned out periodically at Exeter-hall,-lay aside the genius of the poet, the artist, the sculptor, the statuary, and actually do without them. I can do without you, if you happen to be a singer; I can do without you, if you happen to be a poet; I can do without you, man, important as you are in your own estimation, and possibly in the estimation of many other people. As the House of Lords has done without Cromwell, or the House of Commons--I forget which (laughter)--so it might have done without a large number of crowned and titled heads that appear now dignified and honoured there. We just feel that we can do without you, men. Go where you like. Go to Australia-go to Port Natal--go to America-go to California, go where you please. We can do without you-but we cannot do without the British seaman. (Loud cheers.) All that is connected with our intellectual and social comfort, is bound up with the life and employment of those myriads of men who go forth from our ports, week after week, and month after month, to convey our commerce to the ends of the world, and to bring back the productions of the islands and the continents of the world to enrich and dignify and bless our own hallowed country, and make her what she happily is,

"First flower of the earth and first gem of the sea."

(Cheers.) Then, Sir, the peculiar position in which these men are found constitutes a strong argument by which we should be urged to do what we can in order to benefit them. Look to the history of the sailor. There is a large class of men who ever and anon spring up from the ranks of the people, from the mere mediocrity of common position, and stand cut prominently before you. There are such men as Nelson, as Sir John Franklin, on whose behalf the sympathy of enlightened Europe and America likewise has been awakened, and whose life, and that of his noble companions, we hope may, through the providence of God, be preserved to bless the world--there are men who have gone out to sea without any prospect of advancement, and have, by what we call the chances of fortune, by their own force of character, or by the providential arrangements of heaven, risen to dignity and importance. But that, Sir, is not the character of the large number of people on whose behalf we are here. There is a boy, whose mother has watched over him, prayed for him, and wept over him, and his father has taught him. But he was a restless and an ambitious boy. He said, "The land is no home for me," and he went forth, at an early age, poorly educated, ill taught, when passion was very strong, and reason

very weak, has gone forth to breathe a polluted atmosphere, and to come into contact with men of rough and ready minds. That boy has grown up; and has been taught, that in order to be manly, he must swear-that in order to be thought a seaman, he must reject the Bible-that in order to be thought noble and brave, he must contemn all religion. The sound of the church-going bell has never fallen upon his earno minister of mercy has taught him. He goes forth, perhaps, to India, then to China, and has come back hardened and indifferent about religion; and, but for a Society like yours, that young man might have been left to go down to the grave, and perish in ignorance and in guilt,-to live and to die without God and without hope in the world. Then, Sir, think of the bearing of this class of people upon the important religious institutions of the country. I think, when I came upon the platform, I heard you referring, Sir, to the value of missionary operations, and to the fact that our British seamen frequently convey an impression to the native mind, very unfavourable to that Christianity which we all hold to be Divine, on which we all build our hope, and to which we are devotedly attached. Beyond all that, Sir, remember that that great Institution in Earl-street could not send out its Bibles to all parts of the earth, but through British seamen. We of the London Missionary Society, our brethren the Baptists, the Church, and the Wesleyan Missionary Society, could not send out their agents to the ends of the world, but through the medium of British seamen; and will you make them the channel of conveying life and salvation to the heathen world, and not seek to purify the channel through which that life is intended to flow? (Applause.) Yet, Sir, it is a mournful fact, that a large amount of prejudice has been kept up in the public mind about the British sailor. Dr. Arnold, that incomparable man, whose name ought never to be mentioned in any assembly of Englishmen without respect, in one of his notes to his invaluable edition of Thucydides, refers to the fact that the old heathen priesthood of Egypt and India kept up a prejudice against the employment of the maritime population of any land, on the conviction that if the people went from Egypt or from India, and came into contact with the people of other lands, the superstitions of the countries they belonged to would be annihilated or weakened, and eventually overthrown; and he held the great doctrine, that while there was death in the land, there was life in the waters; and that when everything in connection with the old priestcraft of bygone days was contemptible and worthless and effete, the life and energy of science, of literature, of civilisation, and of religion, came to the world through the influence of seamen of the different regions of the earth. How did the Gospel come to Britain? It went not out from London. Christ was not crucified here, but in Jerusalem. Christianity went not out from Britain, but from Judea; and how came it here? Godly men brought it, Sir. It did not come by a miracle. It was not brought by an angel. It did not come direct from heaven, but godly men left Palestine, came down the Mediterranean, and crossed over into Gaul, and thence came to Britain, and planted the standard of the cross on the western isles of our own shores, and there snatched the trembling victim from the knife of the Druidical priesthood, and overturned the altars reeking with human blood, and stained with pollution and with guilt, and laid the foundations of our liberties, intelligence, and social comfort. Thus, all that we have, under God, we owe to the instrumentality of the sailor of a bygone age. (Loud cheers.) Then, Sir, there was a great prejudice felt a long time ago as to the capacity of the sailor to receive the Gospel. It was said, they were a rough, hardy, careless set of men-that they earned their money like horses, and spent it like asses. (Laughter.) It was said and believed, that they were incapable of receiving religion. You can remember the time when our ships of war were called "floating hells." Thank God, that time is gone by. (Cheers.) Oh, Sir! there is great propriety in you, as one of the Lords of the Admiralty, being here. I do rejoice in the character of some men who have held office in that department, abused and misrepresented as it has been. I do rejoice that godly men, especially under the present Government, have held office for the good of the people, and the country and the world. You must have known, Sir, that some of the best men that ever trod the deck, that ever contended with the elements, were godly men, who went out to discharge their duty in humble dependence upon the might and Spirit of the living God. A great change has come over society in this respect. It has been acknowledged that sailors can feel. I have myself talked to them, and know that they can feel. I have talked to a young man about his mother, and I never despair of a boy, however hard-hearted he may be, however thoughtless and reckless, if I can but make him feel when I talk about his mother,

Living, as I do, in the midst of a large maritime population, I have often been the channel of conveying, month by month, more than half a sailor's wages to his widowed mother, with a view to cheer and comfort her heart (cheers); and living, as I do, just in contact with one of the noblest institutions that any spirited gentleman in London has ever set up-the Sailor's Home, built by my friend, Mr. Richard Green, a member of my congregation-I say, observing, as I do, the conduct of some hundred or hundred and twenty men in this institution, week after week, I can safely say that I have never seen an action, or heard a word that might offend the delicate sensibilities of my wife or my children. These men are characterised by a propriety that might shame people who occupy the higher and the middle stations of life. They pay attention to the word and to the worship of God; and I have the greatest faith in the endeavours that shall be put forth on their behalf generally. In common with others, I greatly lament the fact that they have been neglected and overlooked. So far as I can understand it, I think that the bill brought in by Mr. Labouchere, on behalf of the seamen of Great Britain, will do great good in improving the intellectual and moral condition of seamen. I have no great fear as to the centralising power of Government, so long as the vigilant eye of public attention shall be kept upon it, and the power of parliamentary voting shall be brought to bear upon it. I rejoice that such endeavours are made to improve the conditions of British seamen. What shall it be thought right that a ten or twelve hours' bill shall be enacted by the Supreme Legislature of the country, and that no check and no provision whatever shall be made for the comfort of unprotected seamen who navigate our ships, and carry our commerce to the ends of the world? It appears to me that this class of men have a very strong claim upon the merchants of Great Britain. I confess I heard with regret the fact that your Society cannot contrive in any possible way to get together £3000. Why, Sir, I hold that some ten great mercantile houses in London ought to contribute to you more than that amount. (Hear, hear.) I doubt very much the morality of gentlemen and merchants-I do not know whether they are here-if they are, I should be better pleased to say what I am about to say, for I am no calumniator or backbiter-I say I doubt the morality of those who bring young men from every part of Great Britain and Ireland, and employ them to carry out their purposes of trade and commerce, and then simply pay them their wages, and set them afloat, to come in contact with crimps and wretched beings that lay in wait to ruin and rob them. You ought to feel that they are your servants; and as I, as a master, feel responsible for all the domestics who dwell beneath my roof, so ought you as merchants to feel responsibility for the preservation and protection of the men who man your ships and do your work. (Cheers) I rejoice to hear that this Society is about to aim at a larger work, and to undertake a nobler enterprise than it has hitherto done. Everything in the intellectual and moral world is in advance, and depend upon it, seamen likewise must be in advance. I have had it from the best authority, from the authority of the gentleman whose name I have ventured to mention, that he has reaped in the management of, perhaps, the largest mercantile fleet under heaven, the greatest advantage from his own Sailors' Home. Instead of picking up men along the shore in a state of inebriation or partial drunkenness, on the eve of the departure of a ship, all his men are sober, orderly, and quiet, and go direct to the ship at the hour she is about to depart; and I believe the comfort and convenience of the passengers that sail in the ships are greatly promoted by the arrangements that he makes for the improvement of the sailors when on shore. I hold up his example to the great houses of London, and Newcastle, and Liverpool, and would say to them, for the sake of your own advantage, if you cannot be affected by a higher motive, try to elevate and improve the condition of the hundreds of men thus intrusted to your care. You cannot, in an argument like this, forget the influence which it has on the social condition of the country, as a whole. The morality of the people is intimately connected with the stab to of the institutions of our country; but these institutions are extremely dependent on British seamen. I, for one, venture to express my ardent, devoted attachment to that noble, and gifted, and virtuous woman who sits upon the throne, to whom I owe the loyalty of principle and the loyalty of affection, (loud cheers) — to those orders of the community who grace and adorn the land-to those orders of society which, from the peer down to the peasant, constitute the dignity of my country, and make it either the envy or the boast of the civilised world. To these, Sir, I confess I am old-fashioned enough to be deeply and strongly attached; and I do believe, too, that the welfare of all orders of the community is intimately con