Punch (74.1878)

July 6, 1878.]

303

SAFE.

Guest (after a jolly evening). "Goo' bight, ol' Fellah—I'll leave my Boosh
oushide 'Door-"

Bohemian Host. " Ah' eight, m' Boy—[hie)—nobobry'll toussh 'em—goo' ligit !! "

_ {Exeunt.

to press this precious instalment of the " separate system," brought the House down upon
him by 306 to 12.

Then began the weary, but very important, week's work—the debate on Second Reading
of the Duke of Richmond's Cattle Bill, which provides, inter alia, for the slaughtering
of imported cattle, at the port of landing, without regard to the presence or absence of
pleuro-pneumonia or foot-and-mouth disease in the cattle or country of their shipment.

Sir M. H. Beach moved the Second Reading not very brilliantly. Mr. Fobster moved,
as an amendment, not the rejection of the Bill, but of its provisions for compulsory
slaughter.

To-night's discussion, like all the week's debates on the Bill, was in the main a clash
of contradictions between town and oountry Members, the natural advocates of free
import of foreign cattle, and of protection to the British breeder and butcher against

»ir8n comPetiti°n~at the cost of the consumer, as all protection must be.

Mr. Foestes admirably marshalled the arguments against the Bill, showing, a3it seems

to Punch, conclusively, that its provisions to
check the spread of cattle-diseases at home
are as much too weak, as its provisions for shut-
ting our ports against their importation from
abroad are, partly, inapplicable, partly in ex-
cess of the needs of the case. It ignores facts,
when it compels the slaughter of fat cattle
from Spain, Portugal, Denmark, and Norway,
where pleuro-pneumonia, and foot-and-mouth
disease are practically unknown. It lies in
their face, when it admits fat cattle from the
United States, the Canadas, and Ireland, where
these diseases are common. It overlooks the no-
torious truths that, whatever the origin of these
diseases, they have now become naturalised
amongst us, and that the only way of dealing
with them is by a strenuous supervision and
rigid isolation of diseased cattle, home and
foreign alike; that twelve per cent, of the
meat of England, and forty-seven per cent, of
that of London, come to us in the shape of
cattle imported from abroad; and that the rise
of price and curtailment of supply consequent
on what will in effect be the prohibition of
foreign importation of live cattle, is like to be
very serious—so serious, as, with good reason,
to override even Mr. Wheelhouse's faith-
fulness to his Tory colours.

After Mr. Foestee Professor Playeaib and
Mr. Ratheone delivered the most damaging
attacks on the Bill. Of course almost every
statement against the Bill had its contradic-
tion ; but on the whole, Punch is bound to say
chat the case against it seems, as far as he can
judge, immeasurably stronger than that in its
ravour. That being his conclusion, he is con-
Cent to state it without registering the collision
t)f orators pro and con. Monday, Tuesday,
Thursday the debate flowed on, and promises
to reach the middle of next week. It has dis-
regarded party considerations, and its upshot
may well be beyond the calculation or control
of the Whips. It looks, at present, as if the
Government would have either to withdraw the
measure, or so modify it that the President of
the Council will not know his child when it comes
back from the rude handling of the Commons.

Wednesday.—The monotony of the week's
Cattle Bill discussion was but imperfectly re-
lieved by the annual interlude of the Permis-
sive Bill. Even that was unusually dull this
year, for Sir Wileeid was invalided, and had
to trot out his hobby in silence, reserving him-
self for his speech in reply, in which Punch, as
usual, congratulates him on his humorous pre-
sentation of the evils and extent of intemper-
ance—the 59 cases of wife-beating, attempts
at murder, poisoning, brutal assaults, and other
crimes traced, in one day's search through the
newspapers, up to the accursed fountain of the
Bottle ; the 140 millions spent annually in in-
toxicating liquors; the 350,000 drunken cases
taken up by the police—and the ten times
350,000 imbibers who work off their liquor out
of custody. "We throw in Sir Wilfeld his fling
at the very well-appointed bar, 'at length le-
gally attached—Punch is glad to see—to Sir
Coutts's Fine-Art GaLlery, "the people who
went through which were so used up that they
required something to pick them up again after-
wards " ; his chaff of the " Irish Eleven," who
declared that the Irish Sunday Closing Bill
would increase drunkenness, and therefore
opposed it; the Licensed Victuallers' type of
the perfect Christian—"the man who could
carry the largest quantity of liquor without
getting drunk, and pay for it"; "the new
origin of evil—the licensed grocer": in short,
we will give Sir Wilfeid credit for humour,
credit for consistency, credit for patriotism and
humanity—for everything but the wisdom of
his panacea, the Permissive Bill. That we
cannot give him; believing, with the Bishop of
Peteeboeough, that it is even of more impor-
tance that Englishmen should be free, than
that Englishmen should be sober.