Vlll 



Thomas Duckham, Carrington Smith, Arthur Frederick 

 Jeffreys, Francis Charming, Edward Strachey, George 

 Courthope, and Luke White. The efforts of these men, 

 and of others of like ideals and calibre, and the machinery 

 of the Central Chamber, of which they made full and 

 effective use, and which was skilfully operated by a 

 succession of highly competent secretaries (such as Patrick 

 George Craigie, Robert Henry Rew, and Alfred Herbert 

 Henry Matthews), brought about the passage into law and 

 subsequent strenuous administration of the Diseases of 

 Animals Acts, thus enabling live stock husbandry to 

 become the salvation and sheet-anchor of British Agri- 

 culture when the prolonged agricultural depression which 

 commenced in 1879 rendered the production of cereals 

 unprofitable and the farmer's calling precarious. To their 

 efforts it is due that, in spite of the ever-increasing pre- 

 ponderance of the urban population and of urban influence 

 in Parliament, the continuance of the indefensible process 

 of throwing upon rural ratepayers and upon the least 

 profitable of important British industries the main cost of 

 maintaining national education, trunk roads, and other 

 services of a national character, to the exoneration of 

 personal wealth, has been to a large extent frustrated, and 

 Royal Commissions and successive Governments have been 

 compelled to admit its injustice and to hold out hopes 

 of its abandonment. It is thanks to them that British 

 railways are not now, owing to their preferential tariffs 

 and their unfair rates for the consignment of all British 

 farm produce, particularly that of a perishable character, 

 carrying overseas produce to the entire exclusion of that 

 raised at home : that the unpractical education in rural 

 elementary schools, which was inaugurated by the Education 

 Act of 1870, is gradually giving way to mental equipment 

 better adapted to the after career of their inmates : that 



