Death for stealing goods from a wreck, whether there be any living creature on board or not. Acts of Parliament in following years felt the impress of the more merciful spirit of legislation which began to prevail. The punishment of death for theft from a wreck was reduced to imprisonment; while penal servitude for life was made the penalty for a new development of crime, namely, that of wilfully scuttling, or setting on fire, or wrecking a ship for the purpose of defrauding or damaging Insurance Offices or Owners. The existing Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, and the amendments and additions to it, now form the Code by which all maritime questions are arranged; and most of the barbarities, cruelties, and wrongs which, for so many ages, added to the perils of the sea, both as to life and property, are now sufficiently guarded against. But still a most subtle cruelty and fatal wrong is left almost altogether untouched, that of sending vessels to sea in an unseaworthy condition, as to hull, or spars, or sails, or rigging, or perhaps dangerously overladen; many a vessel only worthy of being utterly condemned, which no office would think for one moment of insuring, and that would scarcely pay for breaking up, is bought cheap, patched up, and sent, perhaps, to float up and down our coasts as a Collier, a sort of dingy coffin, only waiting to be entombed by the first heavy gale and raging sea in which she is caught, and then to go quickly down to her grave, carrying with her her crew, unless they have taken warning in time, and found some chance of escaping, which they are not slow to take advantage of, knowing the nature of the craft they are in; but many a brave sailor finds no escape, and feels no hope, when once the heavy gale breaks on the crazy craft, and thus dies a victim to one of the treacherous, and permitted, and most fatal cruelties of our most Christian and most enlightened age; but this state of things, we may well believe, will not be permitted to last much longer; the attention of the public has been thoroughly aroused to the subject, more especially by the zealous, energetic, and unselfish action of Samuel Plimsol, Esq., M.P., who having the welfare of the poor sailor most thoroughly at heart, has attacked with every courage the still existing abuses, arising chiefly from the deficiencies in our Maritime Code, and all who have sympathy with the sailor must wish him success, and who has not? but it is hard work to develop legislative action, even from wide-spread national sympathy; but the work is commenced; and as one result of his action, a Royal Commission has been issued by Her Majesty. The following is a synopsis of the opening instructions of the Commission:-- VICTORIA R.