236 CATTLE AND UAlliY FAKMUSQ, 



developed to their fall capacity, the whole present rental should be paid by the butter 

 produce alone. This shows the great national importance of the Irish butter indus- 

 try, and it is as a great national question it should be discussed. 



It would be very difficult to convey to the minds of persons outside the Irish butter 

 trade the very low level to which Irish butter has fallen in the markets of Great 

 Britain. Perhaps its position could not be better illustrated than by stating that 

 in Dublin, the capital of Ireland, the requirements of the consuming public are al- 

 most entirely catered for with Danish butter and Dutch butterlne. One line of 

 steamers from Rotterdam has brought no less than fourteen thousand packages of 

 butterine to Dublin since tbe 1st of January, and very large quantities manufact- 

 ured in other countries have been brought by other routes, the exact amount of which 

 could not be ascertained. When this is possible at a time when the produce of Irish 

 dairies was being sold at 5. Gd. per pound, and the best at 9<?., no surprise need be 

 expressed at the exclusion of Irish butter from London, Manchester, Liverpool, &c. 

 As a matter of fact Irish butter can only be sold now with very great difficulty in a few 

 of the manufacturing districts of England, and the area of its consumption is becom- 

 ing more limited every year. Its competition now is rather with the produce of the 

 butterino factories than with the butter shipped from France, Denmark, Germany, 

 and Sweden. Butterine has realized a higher price in the English and Dublin mar- 

 kets for the past twelve months than secondary grades of Irish butter, and the bulk 

 of Irish butter, unfortunately, is of secondary quality. The price realized for Irish 

 butter is simply ruinous for the Irish farmers, and with a continuance of the existing 

 system of Irish dairying, the prospect is most disheartening. It simply means agri- 

 cultural ruin, and agricultural ruin means national bankruptcy for Ireland. I have 

 measured and do not shirk the responsibility of this statement. The sooner it is rec- 

 ognized by every one interested in the welfare of this country the better. 



That there is no natural impediment to Irish butter excelling the produce of all 

 other countries is clearly established by Mr. T. J. Clanchy, of Cork, having obtained 

 the gold medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1878, and medals at the exhibitions of 

 Calcutta and Melbourne, from all competitors, with the butter of selected Irish 

 dairies, and, also, by the extreme high prices commanded on the London market for 

 the butter of one or two factories established in Ireland, on the continental system, 

 by the Rev. Canon Bagot. What, then, it will be asked, has caused the decline of 

 the Irish butter trade ? I do not hesitate to place the responsibility for it on the neg- 

 lect of our Government to provide for tbe education of our farmers, as has been done 

 by the Governments of all those countries which have excelled us in the manufacture 

 of butter for the last thirty years. With paternal solicitude they spared no efforts to 

 bring education on dairy -farming within the reach of their agricultural populations. 

 The success of their efforts is evidenced by the prosperity of their dairy industries, 

 as also by the sad plight of the Irish dairy farmer, who has been left unassisted and 

 uneducated in the keen competition forced on him by his European and American 

 rivals. 



The ruin which is now impending over the dairy farmers of Ireland, and the gen- 

 eral agricultural depression of this country, is rebuke sufficient for the apathy and 

 neglect the Government that undertakes to rule us have exhibited towards Ireland's 

 best mterests. The Governments of the United States, France, Germany, Denmark, 



actically educating their 

 trouble in efficiently dis- 



_ _ ___ . ne nothing for the Irish 



farmers. The farmers of Ireland had a far stronger claim on the Government than 

 those of any of the countries above named. Because, owing to past British legisla- 

 tion, they were denied education, and, owing to the Irish land-laws, they have been 

 always kept on the border of poverty. They were thus prevented from doing for 

 themselves what was done for the educated and prosperous farmers of other countries 

 by their respective Governments. I do not want to introduce politics, unnecessarily, 

 into this statement, but it is impossible to exclude the attitude of the Government 

 of Ireland from the discussion of a question which so very largely hinges on the 

 measures that have been adopted by the Governments of those countries which have 

 so successfully driven Irish butter out of the markets of Great Britain. Without the 

 assistance and education given by the continental Governments their dairy farmers 

 could never have beaten Irish butter out of the markets. Up to the time these Gov- 

 ernments made dairy interests a state care, Irish butter, through force of the superi- 

 ority it derived from the natural advantage of soil and climate, was highly prized 

 not alone in England but in every country penetrated by British commerce. Year 

 by year, as education improved the make of butter in other countries, the prestige of 

 Irish sank lower and lower until it has come to that point beyond which it cannot 

 go without extinction. 



Situated, then, as they are, through no fault of their own, the Irish dairy farmers are 

 utterly unable to help themselves in this uneven struggle with the state-supported com- 

 petition of other countries. Their ignorance of even what is causing the depreciation 



