Insurance of Live Stock. 535 



explain, nearly all nninsurccl against destruction by disease. If a 

 rick is burnt down, its value is recovered from the insurance office ; 

 and farmers are not terrified even if surrounded by incendiary fires. 

 Far otherwise is it when tlieir live stock is in danger. They have 

 then no such resource. And where perhaps their whole capital — a 

 large portion of which may be in cattle— is invested on the farm, 

 murrain is ruin. The landlord, too, when the live stock of his tenant 

 is swejjt away, is often pretty much in the situation of a man who has 

 let on lease a house uninsured and burnt down by accident. 



The news that the " hundreds of military cordons " which Professor 

 Simonds told this society guarded the " western side of the German 

 States " had been broken tlirough, that rinderpest reached England in 

 June last, that it was spreading and destroying w^hole herds of cattle 

 in several coimties, necessarily excited the liveliest alarm, which went 

 on increasing, until in January it was loudly proclaimed by high autho- 

 rities that the whole of the cattle of the kingdom was about to perish. 

 The consternation continued, and was felt in both Houses of Parlia- 

 ment. 



The first thing that was required xmder these circumstances ajipeared 

 to me to be some measm-e to stop panic, to inspire confidence, to give 

 time for the adoption of judicious measures for combating the plague, 

 and to protect the stockowncr from ruin by spreading the loss equally 

 over all the owners of property in cattle. This could be done 

 evidently by a system of insurance. Upon looking carefully into the 

 siibject, I found, however, that no adequate data existed for deter- 

 mining the mortality of cattle either in ordinary or epizootic seasons. 

 In England we had no account of the numbers of cattle in the country, 

 nor could I find any trace of an attempt in England to determine the 

 rates of mortality at different ages on a large scale from pleuro-pneu- 

 monia, anthrax, (foot-and-mouth disease), or any of the other common 

 or epizootic diseases. Upon the fullest consideration I came to the 

 conclusion that neither local societies nor commercial companies could 

 encounter the difficulties of the crisis ; and that the only resource to 

 be thought of, iu the presence of the plague, was a system of national 

 insiu'ance. This notion gave rise to the paper which I shall have the 

 honour to submit to the society.* 



We have to-day in our hands for the first time an enumeration of 

 the live stock of the United Kingdom. The Statistical Office of the 

 Privy Council sui:»i)lies useful weekly retm'ns ; the reports of the 

 Eoyal Commission have thrown a flood of light on this remarkable 

 plague ; such measures are in operation for its extinction as have 

 been recommended by the first authorities ; and, finally, the attacks 

 of rinderpest are every week subsiding. So that now it may appear 

 possible to institute, under certain conditions, a system of voluntary, 

 and therefore partial, insurance. I have sketched in outline a system 

 of this kind, taking into account the existing organization in the 

 coimties for the slaughter of cattle. 



To bring the subject fairly before you, I must remind you that by 



* See p. 455. 



