822 
JAMES LAW, 
hands, they would enable him to fill his contracts, would prevent 
the loss of trade, or the danger of loss, and would provide the 
bread and butter for his children. He feels that the State is to 
a large extent confiscating his property, and perhaps ruining 
himself and family; and can we blame him if he feels that he is 
being unjustly dealt with, and if he is tempted to get even with 
the State, by selling his stock at market prices and purchasing 
a new herd from what is understood to be a healthy locality ? 
If he is prepared, as is likely to be the case, to sell below the 
market rates, the dealer is tempted in his turn, seeing he knows 
that in the public market he can make a large profit by trading 
in these cattle. Even if this risk is escaped, and a conscientious 
stock owner informs the government that he has tuberculosis in 
his herd, and if a number are condemned, the low indemnity is 
a constant temptation to the appraiser to do violence to his own 
conscience, because he feels that the stock owner is being un¬ 
justly dealt with. He is under constant temptation to appraise 
above rather than below, or exactly at what he considers the 
true value. Thus, all round the system is calculated to corrupt 
the citizen, and what is of more immediate consequence, it is 
very highly calculated to defeat the ends of the law. 
We are told that appraisers cannot be trusted, and that with 
a high indemnity the State will be made a means of marketing 
cattle that would otherwise be unsalable. But if this is so, how 
much worse must it be if the appraiser has continually before 
his eyes the fact that the State is acting unjustly toward the 
citizen and forcibly seizing his property at half its value ? Is this 
calculated to make appraisers more scrupulous or more trust¬ 
worthy ? The State must secure trustworthy men, but it must 
show them that the action of the State itself is rigidly just. 
In stamping out the cattle lung plague in Illinois, and New 
York, the full appraisement was paid for each animal, and the 
appraisers, drawn in the two States from the two great political 
parties, administered strict justice as between the government 
and the citizen. From my personal knowledge I can vouch for 
their absolute integrity, and I do mot hesitate to say that with- 
