Mr. Henley has informed the Oxfordshire Agricultural As- sociation that
the free importation of cattle has been a great mistake. The number of cattle, he says, in Great Britain is 8,000,000, and the death-rate 141,000. But the average import of the last five years has been 138,000, and consequently farmers have lost by importation. After some puzzling, we have dis- covered what possibly may be Mr. Henley's meaning. He thinks that as there are clearly, by his figures, 15,000 fewer cattle in Great Britain than there were in 1860, farmers have lost that number, besides the natural increase, by the introduction with foreign cattle of new diseases. The import has in fact increased the mortality without increasing production. Unfortunately for the value of Mr. Henley's argument, 'he has first to prove his figures, and then to show that the cause of decline has been the importation, one of them a very difficult, and the other an im- possible, feat.
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