266 
The Progress of Legislation against 
sidered to have arisen, spontaneously, and persons who entered 
upon the very precarious occupation of farming were told that 
they must be prepared to submit to such diseases as a part of the 
ordinary casualties of their business. No sanitary regulations were 
enforced for cleansing and disinfecting the conveyances used for 
cattle, or other living animals, either by sea or by land. Conse- 
quently railway cattle-trucks and the yards or pens used in the 
loading and unloading of animals, and the vessels employed for 
their transit by sea, were each and all in a disgusting state of 
filth, and as such were hotbeds of disease. 
In December 1862, at the invitation of the late Mr. Holland, 
M.P., subsequently President of the Royal Agricultural Society 
in 1874, 1 attended a conference at Evesham on the tenant-right 
question. The next day, when we were looking round his 
farm and homestead, Mr. Holland’s herdsman drew his attention 
to the fact that his grand lot of fat Shorthorn oxen that were 
prepared for the Christmas market had that morning been 
attacked with foot-and-mouth disease. The late Sir John 
Pakington, M.P. (afterwards Lord Hampton), was of the party, 
and I at once embraced the opportunity of pressing upon the 
attention of these distinguished members of Parliament the 
state of the flocks and herds of the country, and the necessity 
for an Act being passed to correct the many evils to which they 
were unrestrictedly exposed. The next session a Bill was 
introduced by Mr. Holland and Sir William Miles; but, like 
many other private Bills, with no further result. 
The following year Mr. Bruce (now Lord Aberdare) and the 
late Sir George Grey, Home Secretary, introduced two Bills, one 
to deal with the home traffic, the other with the importations. 
These Bills were read a second time on the 9th of March, 1864. 
When introducing them Mr. Bruce submitted an estimate 
obtained from a Live Stock Insurance Company showing that 
the aggregate annual losses from deaths due to contagious dis- 
eases amounted to 6,120,000L Nothing was included in that 
estimate for loss of dairy produce, loss from sterility in breeding 
animals, or for deterioration, which in the case of foot-and-mouth 
disease was often very serious, and usually equivalent to the 
whole of the summer’s grazing. 
When the former Bill was before the House of Commons a 
special meeting of the London Farmers’ Club was convened to 
consider its provisions. A very general expression of opinion 
prevailed against it, on account of the proposed interference 
with animals when suffering from foot-and-mouth disease. The 
arguments were, that, however well animals might be when sent 
from home to the London market, they would contract the disease 
