Contagious Diseases of Live Stock. 
275 
until January 1883, when a bull sent from Westmoreland, 
under special licence of health, contracted the disease en route , 
and in less than three months the following counties were declared 
infected: Antrim, Armagh, Cavan, Dublin, Kildare, Mayo 
(South), Meath, Roscommon, Tyrone, and Wicklow. In the first 
week of February 1883 some cattle were sent from Dublin to 
Glasgow, and from thence by rail to Edinburgh. They were 
divided into two lots and sent to different farms. Each lot 
was attacked, and the disease spread with great rapidity ; 
according to the returns for March 23 of that year it was 
reported from the counties of Aberdeen, Ayr, Banff, Dumbarton, 
Dumfries, Edinburgh, Fife, Forfar, Haddington, Kircudbright, 
Lanark, Linlithgow, Perth, Renfrew, Stirling, and Wigtown. 
On May 8, 1883, I had the honour of introducing a deputa- 
tion to the Lord President of the Council, placing before his 
Lordship the very serious outbreaks that had occurred, and 
praying that the importation of live animals from countries in 
which foot-and-mouth disease was known by the Privy Council 
to exist might be discontinued. The deputation was received 
with every courtesy, but unfortunately the importation of 
animals suffering with the disease continued, and it was felt that 
nothing short of the Act of 1884 would prove a safeguard 
against this very contagious disorder. Strenuous opposition to 
the Bill was raised by the Foreign Cattle Trade Association. 
That otherwise able statesman, Mr. W. E. Forster, intro 
duced a large deputation to the Lord President of the Council on 
March 24, 1884, and presided at a very important conference at 
the Westminster Palace Hotel on the same day. He also took 
a prominent part at another conference presided over by Mr 
Lyon. Unquestionably his earnestness in the cause was based 
upon a misconception of the whole subject, although as a former 
Vice-President of the Privy Council, and as having presided at 
the Meetings of the Committee which sat in 1873, he had every 
opportunity of making himself fully acquainted with the matter 
in all its bearings, and should not have fallen into the error of 
endeavouring, as he did most earnestly, to excite the feelings of 
the public by telling them that, should the Bill pass in the 
form proposed, meat would be 2s. 6d. a pound — in fact, that it 
would create a meat famine in London. His arguments were 
met at a conference held in St. James’s Hall and presided over 
by Mr. Chaplin, who also introduced a counter-deputation, 
equally influential, to the Lord President of the Council. 
I met the misleading statements by showing, in a printed 
circular addressed to each member of Parliament, that the aver- 
age price of meat was lower when the flocks and herds of the 
