282 
The Progress of Legislation against 
a Bill was introduced and subsequently became law. This Act, 
11 & 12 Victoria, cap. cv. September 1848, gave powers to the 
Queen in Council to prohibit the importation of sheep, cattle, 
and other animals, or to admit them after quarantine, for the 
prevention of contagious diseases. On the same date the Act 11 
& 12 Victoria, cap. cvii., came into operation, and provided for the 
passing of Orders in Council to prohibit or regulate the movement 
of animals, including horses ; also of meat, hides, fodder, and 
other things likely to spread contagion. It further made it an 
offence to expose diseased sheep in markets. The Act was to 
remain in force till September 1, 1850, but it was continued by 
other Acts till 1853, when the Act 16 & 17 Victoria, cap. lxii., 
was passed. 
More than one of the recent writers on the contagious diseases 
of animals have referred reproachfully to the supineness of the 
Privy Council in not takiug action under this Act to check the 
progress of the diseases which were then existing among farm 
stock. But a candid critic reading the Act would be forced to 
admit that its provisions were directed specially to the preven- 
tion of sheep-pox, which is the only disease mentioned in the 
Act. 
It is true that general powers referring to other animals were 
conferred on the Privy Council. The powers were, however, 
limited to the prohibition of movement of animals, and of sub- 
stances which might carry infection. 
There can be no doubt that the Legislature was fully aware 
that pleuro-pneumonia and foot-and-mouth disease had prevailed 
in various parts of the country during eight or nine years. It 
is also perfectly evident, from the wording of the Act, that the 
Legislature did not contemplate the extinction of those maladies 
by the general adoption of repressive measures. Long after 
the passing of the Act of 1848 the contagious nature of pleuro- 
pneumonia was still emphatically denied by many practical men 
and doubted by most, whilst foot-and-mouth disease was lightly 
regarded as an affection which cattle took naturally, as children 
take whooping cough aud measles. It was, moreover, always 
alleged that animals did so much better after they had gone 
through an attack ; a doctrine which was stoutly maintained by 
an influential deputation of farmers who came to the President 
of the Board of Agriculture in the spring of 1892 to com- 
plain not of the injury done by foot-and-mouth disease, but of 
the losses which farmers sustained from the restrictions on the 
movement and sale of their animals. Had the Privy Council of 
five-and-forty years ago attempted to arrest the progress of pleuro- 
pneumonia and foot-and-mouth disease by slaughter and stopping 
