LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the space.]
THE EMBARGO ON CANADIAN CATTLE.
(To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") Sm,—Your note on the " embargo" question impels me to write explaining the position of the vast majority of British farmers on this question. Up to 1896, when the Act of that year prohibiting all imports of cattle other than for immediate slaughter at the ports was passed, the Board of Agriculture had, under a former Act, a discretionary power to admit cattle from any Dominion or foreign State which they believed to be free from disease. As a result, the Board were constantly subject to pressure from one quarter or another to admit cattle on official assurances being given, no doubt in perfect good faith, that the country in question was free from disease. Constant outbreaks of serious disease took place. For thirty years previous to 1896 the numbers of British cattle remained stagnant at about 10,000,000; but since that date they gradually and consistently increased to over 12,000,000, reaching high- water mark in 1919 at 12,454,000. Surely it is quite consistent to say that the importation of any cattle involves some risk of (Meese, and that we should not throw away the peculiar advantage of our island position? If you wish to repeal the Act of 1896 on the ground of Free Trade, surely you cannot stop at Canadian cattle? This is one point; the door once unlocked will be opened wider and wider, with obvious results.
As regards Lord Ernle's " pledge," his statement given at the Imperial War Conference in April, 1917, was challenged in the House of Commons in the following May, and drew an explanation. Subsequent negotiations with the Canadian authorities made it quite clear that there was no definite promise. But surely the crucial question as to the " pledge " is not only what was said, but whether Canadian stock- breeders acted on the faith of that "pledge "; whether, in point of fact, they have suffered damage by relying on the "pledge." So long as prices were maintained in the United States, up to the autumn of 1920" they sent their surplus cattle there and gained far better profits than they could hope to expect by sending cattle to us, five thousand miles distant from their prairie provinces. It is impossible in the brief space of a letter to go fully into any of the points involved, but may I point out that this agitation began with the promise that if the " embargo " were removed meat would fall 61 a pound; that that cry, entirely discredited by the Royal Commission, has been dropped?
Any who wish to understand the conditions under which Canadian beef cattle are marketed should examine the Minutes of Evidence of the Dominions Resources Commission (C.D. 8,458-59), taken in Canada in 1916, which throws a very different light on the matter from that with which those who are con- ducting the present agitation are attempting to colour the
Previous page
