EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
701 
is f full 5 of it, while yet our cattle are allowed import under 
quarantine into the States. We have shown reason for fear¬ 
ing America has made a serious mistake on the first matter. 
Here, too, we have every case rigidly reported; there it is 
very different. That is not, however, the main point, which 
is, that we are earnestly doing our best to get rid of the 
plague. We are submitting to many restrictions, losses, and 
grievances ourselves. Government and people are working 
hard together, and we have attained already very gratifying 
success. America has yet to take the first step in this path, 
and till she has, it will be wise not to draw any comparisons. 
But, as to her own imports, she has, of course, a perfect right 
to exclude them if she chooses. Her regulations are entirely 
her own affair, as ours belong to us; and we can assure our 
contemporaries that no one expects her to frame them upon 
any basis whatever except her own supposed advantage. 
She does not import on our account, but on her own, and we 
do not frame her rules. 
te It is not in justification of British measures that we pen 
these lines. They need none, and, childish as it seems for 
the press of a great nation to go on treating this question as 
if it were some petty matter of international jealousy, that 
would not be our affair either. As for the spectacle of a 
country which maintains the American tariff lecturing Eng¬ 
land about f Protection,’ and New York editors unable to rest 
for thinking of the food denied to f England’s toiling mil¬ 
lions’—well, Englishmen have some sense of humour, and 
American humour is not bad. But this is, after putting all 
that aside, a very grave question, lying at America’s own 
doors; and if she treats it much longer in this spirit we fear 
America will find out for herself that it is so. What expe¬ 
rience teaches she teaches pretty thoroughly, but usually at 
some expense, and often not a small one.” 
We need hardly remark that the idea suggested in the 
latter part of paragraph 3, that outbreaks of pleuro-pneu- 
monia in Lancashire have anything to do with imports of 
American animals into the port of Liverpool, is purely 
chimerical. The notion, however, seems to be gaining 
48 
LIII. 
