There was a discussion in the House of Lords on
Monday on the very stringent Bill for the stamping-out of cattle disease which has been introduced by the Duke of Richmond and Gordon into the House of Lords, but which is pretty sure to be regarded in the Commons chiefly as a Bill for raising the price of meat and getting the votes of the English farmers for the Govern. meat. Ministers certainly are not very consistent, if they really regard this Bill as necessary. They magnify the results of the discretionary power given them by recent legislation, and yet :in this Bill they propose to abolish their own discretionary power,— at least so far as regards "fat animals" imported from European countries, and to compel such animals to be slaughtered at the
port of debarkation. But even this principle they do not apply to the United States and Canada, and Lord Salisbury says that they do not, because the voyage from those countries is itself sufficient to act as an adequate quarantine. But Lord Salisbury -was there, we fancy, out of his depth. If we are rightly informed, the period of incubation of the worst of the cattle diseases,—of -all but the foot-and-mouth disease,—is much longer than the -duration of the Atlantic voyage. Lord Salisbury's reason for not continuing the discretionary power which, according to the Government, has worked so well, is still more amusing. While the Duke of Richmond and Gordon is wielding the discretion, he says, all will be right, but no other man who is likely to accede to his office can well be what he is! What an epitaph for the dluke!—" Here lies the sole person competent to judge which fat oxen shall be slain, and which reprieved. His immortality was vainly sighed for by his peers, that he might award the doom of fat oxen for ever."
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