The Case for Amending the Plumage Act
THE case for amending the Plumage Act of 1922, convincingly presented by Lord Danesfort, is so simple and unchallengeable that it can be stated in a very few words. If you pass a Bill prohibiting the importation of wild birds' skins (with a -few specified exemptions) your object is clearly to prevent those birds from being destroyed and marketed. But if the prohibition only covers their import and does not extend to sales, you are merely prohibiting an indefensible traffic with one hand while you sanction it with the other. Outside of laputa there can be no logical defence of so anomalous a position. Plainly the effect of legislation thus left in vacuo is to put a premium on dishonesty. When we add to this main consideration certain other factors : that the Scottish retail drapery trade supports the new Bill in the interests of legitimate commerce ; that special provision is made in the Bill for still- permitting the sale of pre-1922 plumage which any salesman can show to be so by con- sulting his invoices ; - that the United States found the same amendment to their Plumage Act indispensable and passed it with the support of their organized millinery representatives, and that the innocuous trades in artificial mounts, ostriches', poultry, and game birds' feathers will all benefit by making the Act watertight, the case for the new Bill is unanswerable. One further powerful argument is that the Overseas Dominions have all passed laws prohibiting the export of their wild birds' plumage. Sir James Barrett, writing in 1925 about the position in Australia, said, "Australia has passed laws protecting its bird life from the plumage hunters, but so long as skins and plumes are saleable in England, a certain amount of traffic results."
Even if the argument that little illegal plumage is being smuggled in could be substantiated, it is not one to be used in defence of this practice. Unhappily the evidence tends the other way. Ever since the original Act came into operation, there have been, in Lord Danesfort's words, "many hundreds of seizures of prohibited plumage by the Customs Authorities." In the autumn of 1924; 136,000 grebe skins were seized in one consignment only, and in the middle of 1925 a collection of varied plumage to the value of £1,555 was confiscated. These are only a few examples of detected consignments. Thus 700 ospreys were successfully smuggled in the lining of a fur coat- from- Paris. - What then must be the total amount of illegal plumage which has escaped the vigilance of the Customs House ? Its existence is paraded in the advertisements of the daily Press—birds of paradise at seven guineas, and ospreys at ten and twelve guineas.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Archbishop of Canterbury should have characterized the Government opposition to the amending Bill as the flimsiest and weakest he had ever listened to. How could Lord Shaftesbury have excused that opposition on the ground that there was no evidence of smuggling ? Even if there were no evidence such as we have given above, how can the Customs estimate data of which only a fraction comes to light ? If the plumage trade is "at present almost dead," what can be the objection to passing the Bill ? Lord Salisbury remarked in his very lame and uncom- fortable speech : "I am dreadfully afraid it will be said that here is this brutal Government which in defence of some obscure vested interest is prepared to run the risk of continuing a trade which all good men reprobate." The frailty of the Government defence against the new Bill makes such imputations, however unjustified, inevit- able, and they will only die a natural death when the Government follows up its wise withdrawal of opposition to the second reading in the Lords by preserving a bene- volent neutrality when it is presented to the Commons.
When Lord Salisbury deprecated Lord Buckmaster's appeal to the humane feeling which was responsible for the original Act, he forgot that but for such passionate indignation the Slave Trade, Child Labour, the industrial exploitation of women, hanging for small offences, the debtors' prison and many another strangled abuse of civilized life would to this day be mocking our claim to be called a civilized nation,
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