The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-30 00:00:00

majority of our statesmen are men of landed property
and rural experience, who seem quite at home when
surrounded by farmers and discussing improved
methods of tillage and the rearing of stock. If the
fact that the greater portion of their time and atten-
tion is engrossed by other and more pressing cares
may seem to place them at a disadvantage in com-
parison with simpler men of a larger experience, this
is more than counterbalanced by the readiness with
which a trained mind can be brought to bear on
questions which are surrounded with difficulty, and
the right treatment of which demands a large habit
of thought. It may be the fashion of some to sneer
at agricultural meetings, as though they busied
themselves with topics unworthy the attention of
statesmen. Men of science tell us that these topics
are among the most interesting which present them-
selves in the domain of knowlege, that no amount
of logic and learning is thrown away upon them.
The problems 'Which suggest themselves to the
thoughtful mind in connection with the tillage of the
soil and the breeding of stock are such as really re-
quire a most extensive reading, a large acquaintance
with chemistry, physiology, and others of the ab-
struse sciences, to enable a man to grapple with them
with any prospect of success. We are not surprised,
then, to find that men whose minds are characterised
by the quality which the Germans expressively
term " manysidedness," are often singularly happy
in dealing with matters of this kind. In the course
of a week we have put on record two most in-
teresting speeches at agricultural meetings, each
delivered by a leading Conservative states-
man. Mr. Disraeli is a statesman, a poet, a novelist.
Sir E. Bulwer Lytton is a statesman, a poet, a
novelist. Each of them makes his appearance, not
for the first time, but still with a becoming diffi-
dence, as if the subject were novel to him, and some-
what foreign to his studies, as a teacher or adviser
on matters of agriculture to a crowded meeting of
his agricultural constituents. The faimers in the
Vale of Aylesbury and in the rich lands which
surrounded the quiet town of Hertford have been
anxious to hear what Mr. Disraeli and Sir E. B.
Lytton could have to say to them on the subject of
the cattle plague. The fact that these so-called
agricultural shows are devoted as much to the
exhibition of live stock as of the more immediate
products of the tillage of the soil reminds us, on
the one hand, of the revolution in farming that has
been taking place of late years ' • and, on the other,
of the sudden check which has been put to it by the
late calamity. Many farmers, having found it more
profitable to raise stock than to pin their chances of
profit to a yield of cereals, which is liable to such
strange fluctuation in our variable climate, have of
late years been converting their arable into pasture
land, and raised root crops on fields that once waved
with golden grain. But " this lowing of oxen and
this bleating of sheep in our ears " will cease to be
so common if it should seem that our cattle are in
danger of being perennially decimated by an incur-
able disease. When beef and mutton shall come to
be sold at eighteenpence the pound the most meat-
loving of mortals must be content to revert to bread
as the staff of life. That which formed the most
prominent feature in former shows was " conspicu-
ous by its absence" in the shows of Aylesbury and
Hertford, where the play of " Hamlet " was acted
with the part of Hamlet left out. There were no
horned cattle. The prevalence of the infectious
disease, so mysterious in its origin and so uncon-
trollable in its spread, has made it dangerous to
assemble large numbers of oxen or cows in
close proximity with each other. Mr. Disraeli
and Sir E. Lytton cannot tell us, any more than
any one else, of any likely method of putting a
check to this alarming plague. Each gives a
faint support to the " kill or cure " policy of the
Government. It may be a wise system, though a
desperate one, to blow up the houses around a con-
flagration to prevent it from extending to other
buildings at a distance. After all, the flame, if fierce
enough, may leap over the gap. We are inclined to
think that the cattle plague has done its worst by
this time, and that the remainder of our herds may
tide over the danger for the present. But, for the
same reason that the dread of cholera puts all our
sanitary boards on the qui vive, this cattle plague
should incite us to greater vigilance in all that con-
cerns the health of our horned quadrupeds. This is
equally necessary whether wo regarrcl +las diacase as
spontaneous in its origin, or as due to an epidemic
poison which has reached us from abroad. Thus,
in the case of men, we do not imagihe that the
essence of cholera is generated in the filthy lodging-
house or the stagnant cesspool ; that the miasma of
typhus is literally bred in the crowded and ill-venti-
lated emigrant ship. We only know that in such
abodes these poisons find their readiest habitat; that
by accumulating in them they gain strength with
which to invade airier and healthier places. The
weed could not spring up without a seed, but it
grows with most richness in the rank soil and on the
dung-heap. In speaking of the cattle pest, Sir E.
Lytton pointed out most forcibly to his audience at
Hertford the importance of guarding against the
" predisposing causes" by which the progress of the
disease is rendered more rapid and more fatal. Among
these he specified, firstly, the cruelty and suffering
which cattle are subjected on board ship and on arri-
val in our seaports; secondly, the unhealthy manner
in which cattle are too frequently transported by rail-
way, and, we may add, driven along the roads; and
thirdly, which he regarded as the chief cause, "the
pestilential mode in which milch cows have been
huddled together in places reeking with filth by the
London cowkeepers." The earliest specimens of the
cattle disease in England were found in the cowsheds
of the metropolis. There can be no doubt that this
last is a crying evil, and that the human as well as
the bovine race should benefit by the attention of
the Le.gislature being so strongly directed to the
question-of the health of our cattle.