The Sun.
London, England, 1865-12-04 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

THE " EXAMINER" ON THE CATTLE DISEASE.—
The cattle plague continues to grow, just as it might
be expected to do, by extending over a greater area.
In the first four months since its outbreak its inten-
sity was confined to London and the counties in its
neighbourhood. It embraced in all no more than
39 counties out of the 84 of England, Wales, and
Scotland, leaving 45 counties, or more than half of
those of great Britain, unaffected. The disease, as
might well have been looked for, has now reached
many of these last, and hence the increase in the
number of the cattle affected. In the first four
months the number was about 14,000, and the deaths
from the disease and from the pole-axe, during that
time ruthlessly resorted to on the recommendation
of the cow-doctors, 12,000, or 85 out of every 100
attacked. The whole number attacked from the
first outbreak up to the present time rises, by adding
only an additional month, to 27,000, and the deaths
to 21,000, or nearly 80 in 100; so that there is no
great difference in the rate of mortality. As to the
loss sustained through the disease in proportion to
the whole stock of horned cattle, it appears, from a
correspondence between the Royal Commissioners
and the Board of Trade, that the number of the
cattle in the island is a matter of mere computation,
and that no tolerable estimate of it has ever been
made. It has been usually taken at 7,000,000, but
we ere given to understand that 8,000,000 would
be much nearer the mark. If we suppose, then,
that the mortality goes on for the rest of the
year at the same rate that it has done fOr the last
five months, the total mortality would be, in round
numbers, under 36,000, or between four and five in
1,000 ; no very great loss in a nation al sense, and
which will certainly be counterbalanced by the num-
ber of foreign cattle imported beyond those of last
year. Let it be remembered that it is not foreign
horned cattle alone that furnish fresh meat to this
country, but sheep and swine as well. Of all these,
then, we find by the returns of the board of Trade
just published that the number imported in the ten
months of 1864 was 595,380 ; while in the corre-
sponding period of the present year they amounted.
to 954,390, showing an additional supply of
379,010,—surely sufficient to balance the loss in
cows and oxen. As to remedies for the cure or
arrest of the disease, all have failed, and the disease
defies Gamgees and Royal Commissioners, the pole-
axe of the one as well as the embargo of the other,
no one being able to say which of the two
nostrums is the more foolish, but all allowing
that both are surpassingly mischievous. Nature
left to herself, or nearly so, seems to be a more suc-
cessful practitioner than either man or cow doctors.
A very instructive letter from Sir Edward Cole-
brooke, the member for' Lanarkshire, appeared a
few days ago in the Times. Sir Edward's stock on
his estate in Surrey consisted of a mixed herd of
Ayrshire and Alderneys of all ages and sizes, thirty-
four in number. When the disease broke out in it,
he treated the disease in the cow-doctor fashion with
stimulants, and all so treated died. He then re-
solved to trust to nature, giving the animals at-
tacked nothing but mashes of oat and barleymeal,
and under this gentler system they all lived, so that
out of his herd he lost but nine, or at the rate of no
more than 27 in the 100. It seems clear that the
baronet and nature are preferable to Gamgce and
the pole-axe, by at least some 58 per cent. The
Royal Commissioners, we are happy to find, no
longer insist, as they seem at one time to have
done, that the cow-pest has been communicated to
the sheep. Beginning with sheep, there is no know-
ing to what extent the abominable murrain might
extend, for some newspapers had it that it had
reached to pigs and poultry, while others insisted
that our very cats were in danger of extinction from
it. We observe that the just-mentioned Royal
Commissioners have been again sitting ; but as we
observe the absence of three of those who consti-
tuted the majority that framed the first Report,
we may presume that their incubation this time will
hatch some remedy less monstrous than that which
was the result of- their first sittings, and which ex-
cited an astonishment highly prejudicial to their
judgment. The Royal Commissioners are per-
plexed with difficulties about making payment for
the infected cattle slaughtered by command of
the inspectors expressly appointed by the
Government. We can see no cause for perplexity.
The animals might have recovered, and in a good
many cases certainly would have done so but for the
inspector's poleaxe and the veterinarian physic.
'they were killed for a public purpose—the hope of
treading out, or at least of arresting the plague.
The owners of cattle so destroyed are surely as much
entitled to remuneration as the proprietors of lands
or houses taken for any public purpose. When
cattle were destroyed for the same purpose a cen-
tury ago, the owners were certainly remunerated,
and it is to be hoped that we are not less just-than
our great grandsires. For every bull, cow, or ox
the sum then paid was £2, and for every calf 10s.
The carcase has since greatly increased in size, and
the cost of meat has been at least doubled. Remu-
neration must therefore be in proportion.
" SATURDAY REVIEW" ON OUR BUTCHERS' BILLS.
—ln stating that the butchers have, in many places
at least, given way, we state a fact patent on the
housekeeper's weekly bill. The prospect of their
concession was so clear to those who studied the
weekly cattle-market returns of carcase prices, that
it was anybody's prophecy that give way they must.
The fact, however, is more comforting by its ac-
complishment than any confidence of predictive
asseveration could have made it before it came to
pass. The butchers have had a highly remunerative
time of it, and are probably investing largely by
this time in Austrian, Turkish, Spanish, and other
" fancy" stocks. A recent correspondent of the
Times, writing from an agricultural point of view,
sought to fasten upon them a profit of 52 per cent.
As regards beef only, that may be true, and on beef
only the calculation to which we refer professed to
be based. But, on a review of the prices of all kinds
of flesh meat, we endeavoured to show some time
ago, and we incline to the same opinion still, that
the profit has been from 30 to 50 per cent. The fall
which has prevailed during the last fortnight amounts
to a reduction of ld. to lid. per lb. !Meat for which
a shilling was lately asked may now be had for 11d.
or 10id., being a difference of from 8 to 12i per
cent. in favour of the purchaser, and against the
butcher. We confess, however, that, so far as pre -
sent facts show the way to an inference as regards
the future, we have little confidence in these figures
holding. The influence of the approach of Christmas
is always supposed to be in favour of a rise. The
quotations of mutton, moreover, in the Metropolitan
Cattle Market, which had in the first two weeks of
the month of Novemberreceded to an average of ss.
Per stone, with a top price of 6s. 4d., have in the
last two weeks advanced to ss. ld. and ss. 2d., with a
top price of 6s. 6d. and even 6s. Bd. Beef, on the con-
trary, had been during the second fortnight of the
month, ld. a stone cheaper than during the first; and
the fall in veal and pork was even more marked during
the same period than in beef, their top prices having
descended respectively from ss. 10d. and 55.4 d to an
even ss. for each. It will be observed, moreover, that
the very large supplies which we have been deriving
from abroad during the earlier part of this autumn
have been falling short towards the end of it.
This was particularly noticeable in last Monday's
market. Considerably less than half the beasts there
offered, instead of the large proportion to which we
had lately become accustomed, were foreigners, and
hardly more than half of the sheep. . The extremely
violent weather of the last fortnight, rendering
navigation perilous and difficult, and thereby largely
increasing the risks of bringing foreign cattle to the
English market, is the probable account of this ;
and we may accordingly expect the same cause to
operate, during several months to come, in rendering
the supply precarious. These facts, however, are
not alone adequate to account for the rise being in
mutton rather than in beef ; since the transport of
sheep by ship is attended, owing to the lighter bulk
of each animal, with less risk of damage arising
from ordinary causes than that of oxen. We have
no doubt, then, that the ultimate ground of the
rise in the metropolitan quotations of mutton is
to be sought in the shortness of the supply
from our own agricultural districts. We had

occasion to notice, in October, a marked decrease in
some of the Southdown country fairs, and it looks
as if the drain which we then suspected to exist had
been going on until the sources of supply are appre-
ciably affected. Of course it may argued that the
unprecedentedly high price which superior mutton
has been fetching for months past ought to have
protected the commodity from, exhaustion ; and,
had the butchers charged for mutton in proportion
as they have done for beef, the figures reached will
no doubt have been so alarming that consumption
must have been checked. The butchers, however,
as they made probably 50 per cent. profit on beef,
veal, and pork, were moderately content with about
30 on mutton ; and by thus distributing the
pressure upon consumption over the whole area
covered by these various kinds of supply, they
relieved the mutton-chop of some pressure which
it oughtproportionately to have borne. The butcher,
in fact, did not charge the consumer " home" for
mutton, and thus the effect of the gradual rise in the
wholesale! price was artificially staved off from the
retail customers. The consequence is that mutton
goes on rising, while sheep-masters are probably
holding their flocks in hand, in the confident
prospect of such Christmas prices as no open market
has ever seen. This game of theirs is, of course,
liable to be spoilt by a run of calm weather flooding
the market with Dutch and German Sheep, and for
the home consumer's sake we hope it may be so.
Agriculturists may have made little on their beef,
and in some quarters, we well know, deplorable, and
perhaps irreparable, losses have fallen with an un-
exampled degree of inequality on individuals, owing
to the cattle plague. But as regards their sheep
they have had, and still are enjoying, a capital time
of it. The tide in the affairs of men" and beasts
has been running hard and fast in the sheep-master's
favour, and if any appeal to public charity be set
on foot for the benefit of the losers on horned stock,
we recommend that the "hat" be " passed round,"
first to the butchers and next to the owners of
sheep.