The Sun.
London, England, 1866-02-01 00:00:00

SPIRIT OP THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—It is to be feared that we are losing our
last hopes of a cure for the Cattle Plague. Vacci-
nation promised well at first, but it seems now to
have been ascertained that it offers no infallible or
permanent protection against the disease. Like all
the of her systems of treatment attempted, it has ap-
parently succeeded in some cases, but has clearly
failed in others. All we now know is that some ani-
mals, either from predisposition, or breed, or other
circumstances, escape attack, and that others,
though attacked, nevertheless recover. These re-
sults, however, appear to be substantially indepen-
dent of all methods of treatment. In proportion,
then, as cure becomes hopeless, prevention rises in
importance. We are not sure that even prevention
is quite so practicable as it was thought to be.
That the plague is essentially a contagious disorder
is beyond a doubt, but that it can occasionally be
propagated otherwise than by actual contact appears
unquestionable also. Perhaps in cases where the
deaths have been numerous the infection becomes
strong enough to be carried by the air, but we have
the satisfaction of knowing that, as a general rule,
the stoppage of traffic and intercourse will certainly
prevent the plague from spreading. We think, in-
deed, that the weekly returns, alarming as they are,
contain evidence of the benefits derived from our
present precautions. The disease advances, but it
has obviously a strong drag to contend against.
Had so subtle and deadly a pestilence been left to
spread without control, our losses would not be
limited to 100,000 in six months. Wherever mea-
sures of precaution are rigorously applied, the plague
is more or less stayed. In Aberdeenshire, indeed, it
seems to have been absolutely conquered and
" stamped out," and it has by the same vigorous
precautions been prevented from spreading into
the Northern Counties of Scotland. The great
object, therefore, now is to exert to the ut-
most the only means of arresting the disease
which are visibly in our power, and it is not to be
disguised that we are brought by this conclusion
to the recommendations made by the Royal Com-
missioners three months ago. The resolutions passed
at county meetings are simply repetitions, for the
most part, of the conclusions of the Report. Isola-
tion at home and regulated importation from abroad
form the staple of the suggestions now pressed
upon Government, and in these doctrines is con-
tained the essence of the Commissioners' advice.
With respect to isolation, it might fairly be urged
that the example of Aberdeenshire is conclusive as
to the sufficiency of local authority, if duly exerted.
Government could never have done more for that
county than it has done for itself, and yet that
county had no more power of action than any other.
But though this may be true, it does not decide the
question. The question is, not what all the counties
of the kingdom could do if they chose, but what
they might be expected to do under actual circum-
stances. They did not all take the alarm, or take it
at the same time, or act with the same energy. The
" uniformity" of action so much to be desired might
have made every county an Aberdeenshire by
superior authority. As it is, though magistrates and
farmers are sufficiently in earnest when the plague
actually appears, the local authorities are under
strong temptations to suspend their action till the
latest moment. The stoppage of cattle traffic is a
very serious affair, and everybody would be glad, if
.possible, to escape such an inconvenience. Unfor-
tunately, it is not the evil, but the remedy, which is
postponed by delay. The evil comes only too surely
in the end, and then the remedy is too late. At
this moment, even, as a correspondent points out,
there is a wide difference of feeling between the
agriculturists in certain districts and the public at
large. No words can be too strong for the speakers
at county meetings who have had the ravages of
the plague before their eyes, but in places yet
uninfected, and in towns still well supplied with
meat, the dangers of the crisis are less adequately
appreciated. All England has not suffered like
Cheshire ; in fact, the murrain is not yet brought
home to everybody's door. It is still argued that the
loss of 80,000 or 100,000 cattle is not a thing to be
regarded as a national calamity. This might be true
if that were the whole loss ; but it may represent
only a sacrifice of the ultimate sacrifice. The fore-
bodings of prophets have been hitherto verified,
substantially, if not completely. Many alarmists
anticipated, no doubt, a far larger return than
10,000 for the twenty-fifth week of the plague, and
the march of the disorder must be greatly accelerated
before its victims can be reckoned by millions, as
in Continental visitations. But it is plain that no
medicine, no treatment, no change of season, nor
any measures of precaution have yet prevented the
plague from growing and spreading. Every week
sees it more destructive than before. We have
checked it for a time here and there, but we have
never got ahead of it altogether. Upon the whole
we fear it may be said that we have only done
enough to show how much more might have been
done by timely, vigorous, and uniform action. We
believe that the mischief has been materially cur-
tailed by our precautions, and it follows, therefore,
that the system should be pursued. It does not
appear that we can cure, but it does seem we may
may prevent. Even if we should be unable to
" stamp out" the plague utterly, we may save our-
selves from the terrible losses experienced by other
countries, and the attempt will be all the more
reasonable as well as easy from the advance we
have already made. The suspension of cattle traffic
would be a great public inconvenience, but great
inconvenience is felt already, and without the re-
compense which stricter and more uniform mea-
sures would bring. A visitation like the cattle
plague must produce trouble, and probably most
people now regret that the short, sharp, and effec-
tual action recommended by the Commissioners was
not attempted at the time. By that course we
might, perhaps, before now have been rid of the
plague ; three months hence the case may be still
more difficult than it is at present. At the
same time ,we cannot but observe that the local
authorities who complain most loudly of the
inaction of Government are the very autho-
rities who might, had they so pleased, have acted
for themselves. Boards of magistrates in censuring
Government do but cast censure upon each other;
for their argument amounts only to this, that Mi-
nisters ought to have done that work which the local
authorities could not, as the event shows, be trusted
to do for themselves. If any counterpoise of advan-
tage is to be gained from this calamity, we hope it
will be found in an improved system of markets and
slaughter-houses. If foreign cattle are to be killed
at the ports of landing, it is clear that British cattle
ought to be dealt with on similar principles, so that
in the end the traffic in live cattle would cease to a
great extent, independently of the exigencies of the
cattle plague. This, which would be advantageous
in many respects, would be especially so as regarded
any future visitations of the disease. It is thought
not impossible that our liability to these inflictions
may continue, and in that event a well arranged
system of dead-meat markets Would find us always
provided with those barriers against contagion which
we have so much difficulty in establishing now. No
ox need go to the butcher when it is a settled prac-
tice for the butcher to go to the ox, and it is only
for the want of so wholesome a practice that we have
been thus perplexed with a conflict between present
interests and imminent necessities.
Posv.—The miseries and hard treatment endured
by the pauper class of the community have lately
furnished a fruitful theme for declamatory and com-
miserating writing. Poverty, hunger, and dirt have
been described with a profusion of detail hitherto
unknown. Disease has been photographed in its
most ghastly and revolting shape, and brought be-
fore the eyes of those whose only ideas on the sub-
ject were derived from the discreet returns of the
Registrar-General, and perhaps the chance perusal
of the circular of some charitable institution. There
has been perhaps a little too much of the sensa-
tional element introduced into these highly wrought
pictures, but there can be no doubt that it is desir-
able that those who fare sumptuously every day should
know what is actually meant by poverty and pau-
perism. It is an impossibility with most well-to-do
people to realise the misery of their poorer neighbours,
or to fill up for themselves the ghastly picture of
starvation and disease. Clothing to them means
only a method of personal embellishment, and hunger
is known to them only as a desirable addition to the
pleasure of dining. But there are few of these who,
if they had been taken to Timothy Daly's bedside
in the workhouse, would not have given their coats
from off their backs to alleviate his sufferings.
Could Dives always seo Lazarus lying at his gate,
he would not often refuse him the crumbs from his
table. Unfortunately, in modern life, each section
of society lives so completely within itself that it
seldom looks even so far as its gate ; and it is use-
less to speak to it in general terms of the sufferings
of any other section. But once invest the case with
human interest, by filling up the details of the pic-
ture, and dwelling upon a particular phase of suffer-
ing, and the appeal to the feelings will not be made
in vain. From time to time there appears a short
paragraph in the newspapers detailing the death
from starvation of some poor wretch—too proud,
perhaps, to beg, too weak to work—who has lain
down to die by the roadside ; and such an account
awakens more sympathy and pity than all the suf-
fering and misery in the returns of the Registrar-
General for a whole year. And when pictures so
startling as those we have already seen are put
under men's eyes it is not in human nature to remain
indifferent—least of all in this country, where the
purse-strings are but loosely tied, and where every
daily paper bears witness to the prodigal and often
unwise generosity of the charitable. It is not, there-
fore, at all surprising that the public mind should
have received so profound a shock at the recent ex-
posures of the workhouse system, nor that those

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who were thought to be more Immediately blamable
should have incurred so much reprobation. In
truth, of late the guardians of the poor have been
in a less enviable position than the poor them-
selves. Mr. Farnall has explained laws to
.them, and visited them with stern—and not en-
tirely unmerited —rebuke. The press has con-
demned them, coroners' inquests have threatened
them with verdicts of manslaughter, and a storm has
been raised against them throughout the country
before which such considerations as the advantage
of lowness of rates or the propriety of selection
in
granting relief have been entirely lost sight of, and
we are now in a fair way of giving before long some
practical affirmation to the doctrine that every per-
son who chooses to apply is entitled to be taken into
a comfortable lodging, and have his hunger satis-
fied and his morals strictly cared for at the expense
of his fellow-citizens. While the disagreeables in •
cidental to the condition of those who have the ;
mis-
fortune to wish to be maintained at the expense
other people have been so strongly insisted upon,
the paupers themselves have discovered that they.
.are. an object of interest to the world at large, any.
it is instructive to notice what their conduct /Ito,
been.. Their satisfaction at the altered state 0i
things, it would seem, has been chiefly shown by
t. caring up their clothes, in order, probably, t.o.raa"
it clear that, as there seems to be a disposition. to
grant them relief, they will get as much of it t
they can. Scarcely a day passes but cases of this
sort are reported, and almost invariably the perpe-
trators calculate
show an overbearing insolence not calculat
impress
to the reader with a great sense of theird
gratitude to anybody for their night's lodging an
breakfast. Two women who were brought before
the. magistrate at Marylebone on Tuesday had {bet
it
as it appears, composed a song in glory of their
achievement. From these cases, and from tt
authentic descriptions of the interiors of east':
wards with which we have latterly been favoured,
it would appear that the great majority of the In-
mates by no means conduct themselves in the man"
ner which might fairly be expected of those vih°
are being provided with the necessaries of life I)y..
other people free of expense. On the contrary, it
seems that not only is the conduct of
casuals of
the most riotous and revolting description, but that
they have a most thorough-paced contempt for everY
official connected with their relief. As for thankful;
ness for everything, that seems to be quite out of
the question ; and it is impossible to avoid coming_
the conclusion that the casual paupers are, asaruln
the most degraded, turbulent, and ill-condition -condition
part of the population. Surely there must be some-
thing radically wrong here. It could not have binintended that the hard-working and rate-Tall
community e
should tax themselves to maintain t
idle and degraded. Paupers incapacitated by, afici
sicknesss, or infirmity have a claim in a &lit%
.country to be maintained by their fellow-11102i; but
a country where so many branches of inallsA7t,
are open it is impossible to believe very fulls 'Th
those who can work and will work cannot get wur
to do. If it be so, however, it cannot be the do
of those who are charged to relieve them goingu°
.more than find them work and pay them for
it. But if none is demanded—if it ever is elearli
settled that anybody and everybody who chooses!:
apply are to be entitled to bed and board at tu
public cost—then let us not make our workhousel
too comfortable. The labouring man has a bar,
task to make both ends meet, and it would be
grave discouragement to the independent but
struggling labourer if it were to be once known t. 1.1,1110
he would be as well lodged and fed were he an 1'
andinsolent pauper.