How far it may be desirable to apply for an act of parliament, or to establish the Institution into a chartered association, will remain for the general Committee to decide, when the whole has assumed a distinct form. It is also probable that great advantages might result from the investigations of a Committee of the House of Commons into the insufficiency of the enactments and regulations now in force for the preservation of life, and the prevention of plunder, from vessels which may be wrecked within the jurisdiction of our laws.
I also venture, with deference, to recommend, that other maritime nations should be invited to form similar establishments, so far as accords with their respective laws and usages, and to concur in mutual arrangements with Great Britain for the reciprocal aid of the subjects and vessels of each other.
Nor is the universal adoption of this system more imperatively demanded, by those feelings which should incite us to afford the most prompt assistance to the people of every country who may be in danger of shipwreck on our shores, than it is consistent with a wise and enlightened policy, which should extend our views from our own immediate coasts, to the most remote quarters of the globe, and to every neighbouring state; more particularly from the entrance of the English Channel to the frozen regions of the North. And when we recollect the vast commercial fleets which the enterprise of our merchants adventures into every sea, and during every season; when more than a thousand sail of British vessels pass the sound of the Baltic each year; ought we not to bear in mind to what hazards the subjects and vessels of Great Britain are constantly exposed, on the whole of so extended a coast, and in every stormy and dangerous sea? and shall we not be wanting to them and to humanity, if we do not endeavour to obtain for our own shipwrecked countrymen, in every foreign land, the same effectual aid in the hour of danger, which, I doubt not, it will become one of the proudest objects of this Institution to extend to the vessels of every nation which may be in distress on the British shores?--Even during the most arduous prosecution of war, the cause of humanity, and the progress of civilization, would be eminently promoted by these noble and generous efforts, for the rescue of those, whom the fury of the elements had divested of all hostile character, and thrown helpless and powerless on a foreign coast.