THE TORY GOVERNMENT AND THE PRICE OF MEAT.
THE apprehensions of a deficient harvest may or may not be realised in England, but the open grain markets of the Old and New Worlds secure us against any real danger of dear bread for the winter. For a great proportion, however, of the people of this country, cheap meat is now almost as indispensable an element of comfortable living as cheap bread. Thirty years ago it was not so, but the rapid rise of wages and the general improvement in comfort that have taken place since
the repeal of the Corn Laws have given the meat supply the highest social importance. All but the lowest ordef of the labouring class now eat meat habitually, and in large quanti- ties; the "beans and bacon" which constituted Cobbett's ideal of what a stout Englishman's fare ought to be have been supplanted by beef and mutton ; the artisan's wife will no longer be satisfied with "waste pieces," but must have the best bits of the prime joints for her husband. Servants, too, insist upon a scale of diet that would have amazed our fathers. In ordinary middle-class households the consumption of animal food is probably from twice to three times as great as it was when the Queen came to the throne. Three meals a day, in which meat is the principal feature—breakfast, luncheon, and late dinner—are now habitual, even in families who live most quietly and plainly. This custom has obtained a powerful hold upon the English people, and it could not be materially changed without extraordinary discomfort, or possibly without some injury to health. Yet what is to be done, if the price of meat continues to rise, as it has done steadily from year to year within the last decade ? The butcher's bill is already the most portentous item in the domestic budget. To what proportions will it swell, if the demand for meat continues to increase at the rate that now seems to be taken for granted as normal, while the supply is not only not augmented, but in some direc- tions is positively restricted? A great number of middle-class people, as well as the artisans, who are now said to be such good customers of the butchers, cannot afford to spend any more money on meat than they do at present.
It is rather surprising, therefore, that more attention is not bestowed on the causes that keep meat at a high price. Some of these we cannot hope to control, others may be trusted to work their own remedy ; but we can, at all events, insist that no restriction of the supply shall be maintained for which im- perative reasons cannot be shown. This was the way in which the country obtained cheap bread. It insisted that the impor- tation of grain should be free, and refused to listen to any arguments founded upon the interest of home producers. But what if the principles of the Corn Laws are be- ing carried out by indirect means, for the benefit of the stock-breeders and grazing farmers of the United King- dom ? The principle of Protection has been finally condemned in this country, and would find no supporters now-a-days, if the friends of the farmer were to put it forward nakedly, but it is easy to see how the practice of Protection may be indirectly enforced. Let us suppose, for instance, that the grain crops of Southern Russia or of the Western States of America were suddenly to be attacked by some insect pest as dangerous and ineradicable as the Colorado Beetle or the Phylloxera, would it not be quite possible to establish a system of examination for imported corn, the stringency of which would lay so heavy a burden of cost and risk upon the corn importers that the imports of foreign grain would be enormously diminished ? Is it not further conceivable that the pressure of this system might be carried far beyond the practical necessities of security against external contagion ? It is no doubt desirable to protect English agricultural interests against the dangers of foreign diseases, but it depends upon the Executive Govern- ment to pause at the point where safety has been reached, or to go far beyond it, and under the pretence of keeping out all infected imports that would compete with English pro- duce, to keep out a large proportion of all such im- ports. A Ministry in which the landed interest predominates, and which has especially good reasons for desiring to con- ciliate the farmers, is likely, to say the least, to view with complacency measures for excluding infection so stringent as to be really protective. Thus, we believe, Mr. Disraeli's Administration has worked the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act, probably with perfect honesty of purpose, but with a strong bias towards the views of the agricultural interest. The restrictions on importation that have been decreed at the Privy Council Office are enforced without the slightest regard for the interests of the consumer of meat; some of them, it is alleged, are futile, and some of them unnecessary for their professed purpose, the exclusion of murrains ; and taken in the aggregate, they probably add two or three pence in the pound to the average price of beef and mutton, while if the importers keep their menace of importing no more, they may add sixpence or a shilling. This is surely a matter in which everybody in the country is interested. Mr. Disraeli abhors the suspicion of being "coerced," but he is proud of being "assisted" onwards by public opinion.
The grievance of an artificial increase in the price of meat due to regulations of which, whatever the ostensible object, the effect is to keep foreign cattle out of the English markets, will be very seriously felt during the winter that is before us, if pressure be not brought to bear in time upon the Government. The opportunity of doing so was given on Saturday last to a deputation of foreign importers and dealers in cattle, which waited on the Duke of Richmond at the Privy-Council Office. The principal speaker was the chairman of the Associated Foreign Importers, and the imme- diate object of the demands made upon the Government was that " foot-and-mouth-disease restrictions should be expunged from the existing regulations affecting the importation of foreign animals." But the arguments which were brought forward by the deputation, and which the President of the icouncil promised "to lay before his colleagues," go much - further than this. The maintenance of the foot-and- mouth-disease restrictions is but a part of the policy for which the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act furnishes the machinery. Yet it is so salient an instance of the use that may be made, for economical protection, of legis- lation intended merely to exclude disease, that it is well, perhaps, to have attention drawn, in the first place, to the working of the Privy Council regulations on this subject. The chairman of the Associated Foreign Importers affirms that, "foot-and-mouth disease was prevalent among cattle bred in the United Kingdom some years before foreign animals were allowed to be imported ; that restrictions on importation, although rigorously enforced for many years, had proved to be useless and had considerably increased the price of meat ; that the disease was generally believed to be an epidemic, a passing evil, and beyond control ; and that the most eminent veterinary authorities were almost unanimously of opinion that the exist- ing regulations should be withdrawn." These assertions raise some questions of fact as to which we have imperfect evidence, and offer some opinions that are possibly open to dispute. But we do not see how the Privy-Council Office can escape the dilemma in which they are placed by the allegation, which the Duke of Richmond did not contradict, that "foreign ani- mals were subject at the place of landing to regulations which were not applied to home-bred animals exposed for sale in any market of the United Kingdom ; in the latter case the animals, suffering from disease only were required to be slaughtered while the remaining were allowed to go all over the country ; whereas in the case of foreign animals, if one animal of any class was even slightly affected, the whole of the cargo was ordered to be slaughtered, by which enormous loss was sus- tained by the importer." For example, 2,250 foreign sheep have been slaughtered this week, because two of them were diseased ; whereas, if they had been Irish sheep, 2,248 would have been preserved alive, at a difference to the importer of 138. a head. Either the regulations governing the treatment of English cattle among which the disease has appeared are dangerously lax, or those applied to foreign cattle are inexcusably severe. One infected beast in a cargo from Antwerp or Rotterdam dooms the whole importation to slaughter at Deptford, but English cattle and foreign cattle that have been passed as sound at the port of entry are con- demned only by the head. The beasts actually infected are killed off, and the rest are allowed to be sold and driven to different parts of the country without hindrance. If the disease be so fatally contagious that it is necessary to destroy the whole of a cargo of live animals in which it may have broken out at Deptford, the dismissal of an entire herd at some country market after the slaughter of one or two diseased animals must be a discreditable concession to the interest of British owners of stock. The difficulty is explained if we accept the statement of the chairman of Foreign Importers, that the foot-and-mouth disease is a mere epidemic, not con- trolled by such restrictions as those of the Privy-Council regulations ; but then, why should those regulations be ap- plied to the foreign cattle trade only ?
The answer is not to be evaded. The English stock-breeding and grazing interest would not submit to such regulations as those that are enforced at Deptford, for the sake of the doubtful dimi- nution in the ravages of the foot-and-mouth disease that is ex- pected from their application. But it is quite a different matter, in the eyes of the farmers and the farmers' friends, to impose such wholesome discipline on the importers of the foreign beasts that compete scandalously with the well-bred English herds. The Government is naturally slow to see any reason why there should be an equality of conditions between the English breeder of stock and his rival abroad. But public • opinion may quicken the Duke of Richmond's comprehension, and "assist" him to the reform for which his soul is possibly
Ipining in secret, when it comes to appreciate the meaning of a member of the deputation to the Council Office on Saturday, who "pointed out that large numbers of foreign cattle had been prevented from coming into the United Kingdom in con- sequence of the harassments imposed upon foreign stock, and contended that they were as free, if not freer, from disease than animals bred in the United Kingdom." It must not be forgotten that we have already had some experience of the manner in which Tory Governments regard the claims of the public for a free meat-market when they are brought into competition with the interests of "the land." In 1866, the panic excited by the invasion of the rinderpest, which we admit is a murrain so destructive that it ought to be excluded by every reasonable means, enabled Lord Derby's Government to exclude from the English market the whole importation of live cattle from Holland, though half-a-dozen of the northern Dutch provinces were as free from the plague as Tipperary was. The Duke of Buckingham, who then occupied the high office that the Duke of Richmond fills now, turned a deaf ear to the remon- strances of the cattle importers, of the meat-consuming public, and of the Government of the Netherlands. He was supported by the Parliament of landlords, which a few months before, in spite of the conclusive arguments of Mr. Mill, had decided to compensate the farmers for their common trade-risks out of the public Exchequer. But this class-feeling is not nearly so strong as it was nine years ago, and the action of public opinion upon the Government is, we hope, more intelligent as well as more direct.
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