May I ask the Patronage Secretary to the Treasury if he has any further statement to make with regard to the business for next week?

I desire to avail myself of this opportunity of slightly altering the announcement I made yesterday.

On Monday, we shall take the Second Reading of the Franchise Bill.

On Tuesday, the two Bills I announced yesterday.

On Wednesday, the Foreign Office Vote.

On Thursday and Friday, the Second Reading of the Franchise and Registration Bill.

Which of the two Bills put down for Tuesday will have precedence?

I am not sure. I will consult hon. Gentlemen opposite, and in the course of the day will let my hon. Friend know.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Ulster Members will have to be absent on Friday? Has it not always been the custom not to take the Second Reading of any important Bill on the 12th July? It is rather hard there should be a loss of seventeen votes on that day.

I will bring the matter before the Prime Minister. If the hon. Member -will repeat his question on Monday my right hon. Friend may perhaps make a further statement.

I hope the right hon. Gentleman will remind the Prime Minister of the fact I have stated.

Is it not the fact that the Prime Minister postponed the Home Rule Bill and promised not to take it on the 12th July, in order to meet the wishes of hon. Members above the Gangway?

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Prime Minister postponed the Second Reading of the Welsh Church Disestablishment Bill in order to secure the attendance of the Nationalist Members?

Would it not be more convenient to take the Mentally Deficient Bill and the Drunkards Bill on the 12th July?

Will those people be here?

I beg to move "That Subhead A (Salary of the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction (Ireland) be reduced by £100."

I do so in order, first of all, to offer an opportunity to the Vice-President to give a full explanation of the circumstances connected with the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Ireland and its connection with the outbreak in England. I also wish to offer certain criticisms on his action, so far as it has been disclosed, and to make one or two suggestions as to how such a matter should be dealt with in the future. I am glad that we have the Vice-President here to listen to our criticisms. Two years hence we might summon him by telegraph or telephone and he might not come from the other side of the water. At some future date we might have to discuss this subject by reference from the Foreign Office in this country to whatever office in Ireland may deal with relations with foreign countries. I need hardly say that this is a question which vitally interests us in this country. It opens up very important questions as well. It certainly comes very very vividly before me when I realise that we here are dependent not merely for our agricultural prosperity but for the food supplies of millions of people in large centres, not only upon the administration of the Board of Agriculture in this country and upon the accuracy of its veterinary officers in the observations they make, but also upon the Board of Agriculture in Ireland and on the method in which its officers carry out their duties, and upon the manner in which they are instructed and trained to do their duty. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman can complain of my raising this question certainly from a British point of view; the Irish Members may have a different point of view to put forward later on, but the fact remains that we have already suffered in this country a very big loss owing to this outbreak of disease. It was, I think, one of the hon. Members for Cork who suggested that we were a rich country and therefore it did not very much matter. But I would point out that the loss falls upon agriculturists, who are, in a sense, the poorest class in the community. Their great show at Doncaster has practically been destroyed: the animals collected there had to be sent back to all quarters of the country, and will have to be carefully watched, and a large expenditure has been incurred in that way. We must not forget that any outbreak of this kind in this country at once effects a stoppage in our foreign trade, because every foreign country, on hearing of an outbreak in this country, at once closes its ports to exports from this country. It is a minor matter, but I suppose we shall not be able to send any of our exhibits to the Highland Show at Cupar this year. That may not be a matter for regret to Scotchmen, because none of the prizes this time will cross the border, and Scotchmen will scoop the lot. These Orders of the Board of Agriculture have had to be applied to large districts in this country. They have been applied to Cumberland, South Lancashire, the West Riding, South Cumberland, and, I think, North Cumberland was announced to-day. We have a very black record indeed to put before the right hon. Gentleman. He need hardly be surprised at that, as the origin of this outbreak has been traced to Ireland. [An Hon. MEMBER: "No."] The hon. Member is of course entitled to hold his own view. There is some admission on the part of the right hon. Gentleman that Ireland had something to do with it, therefore we are going to scrutinise very carefully his administration in that country. I have to make one or two references to general matters, but I think the Committee will see that they will become very relevant to the criticisms I propose to offer.

It is about sixty or seventy years since the first recorded outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease took place in this country. We have had outbreaks at varying periods ever since, and during the last thirty years. Ireland, on the contrary, has been rather differently situated. Ireland has not had any outbreak of the kind since 1884—that is, for twenty-eight years. That is a very relevant fact, which I shall have cause to notice afterwards. The last time Ireland did have it she had it pretty badly. There was then an outbreak in no less than twenty counties, and 114,500 animals were affected on 3,500 farms. To what is this immunity of Ireland due? I believe it is true to say—and I am borne out in this by the evidence given before the Departmental Committee on Foot-and-Mouth Disease—that this immunity of Ireland is largely due to the fact that England is interposed as a sort of buffer State between Ireland and the Continent, and that for most of the imported foodstuffs we act as a kind of sieve for anything going into Ireland. In that way Ireland has previous notice of what takes place in this country, and can protect herself against infection. The restrictions on the Irish side of the Channel are in many ways stricter than those on the British side against Irish imports, particularly in the matter of disinfectants. I think we have some complaint to make that we should be boarded in this way by Ireland sending over some of this disease to us. In order to make quite clear what went on on the other side of the Channel, I will refer to what took place on this side. I must ask the Committee to bear in mind the dates and hours, which are of importance in this matter. First of all, on Thursday, 27th June, the English Board was informed of certain lesions in the tongues of two beasts in the Liverpool abattoir. That was the first practical notice of the state of things that came to the Board, according to the testimony of the head of the Board. That matter was looked into. It was found that the affected animals had been bought on 24th June in the Stanley Market, Liverpool, to which they had been brought on the 23rd by an Irish dealer who buys cattle in the Dublin Market. On Saturday, the 29th, there were further cases among cattle bought from the same dealer. Fifty-eight Irish cattle were discovered in a field near Carlisle, some of which were infected. It was found that these cattle had come in a consignment from Dublin to Holyhead on the previous Sunday. That established, in the mind of the President here, the fact that there was some connection between this outbreak and Ireland, and that Ireland was probably responsible for it. It was not until 1st July, last Monday, that the President here was informed from Ireland that on a farm near Swords, in the county of Dublin, twenty-four cattle visibly affected had been discovered. From that we get the connection between the outbreak here and the outbreak in Ireland. It is that outbreak I would like the Committee to consider carefully. I will deal with the action of the Vice-President of the Board. The right hon. Gentleman or his office received a telegram at seven o'clock on the evening of Thursday, 27th June. The right hon. Gentleman did not give the words of the telegram; he simply said:— that telegram. The telegram says later that the animals—

I sent no telegram to officers. The officers were standing by; I sent the officers direct.

The right hon. Gentleman sent the officers off on the Saturday. Unfortunately they were sent off too late to do anything on the Saturday night. They did their work on the Sunday morning.

There were two cases investigated on Saturday night.

Eight out of ten cases were decided on Sunday. The officer from Swords returned about noon, and reported that the infection had broken out on a farm there belonging to the Misses Cruise. Reports came in that day from ten different places. Eight were ruled out as being quite healthy, and the chief veterinary officer went off to this farm and came back at 7·30 to report that twenty-four cattle were infected, and that he had taken certain precautions to prevent the matter spreading further. At a later date, which the right hon. Gentleman does not state, these cattle were slaughtered.

On Monday.

I am glad to know that. On the Monday morning an Order was sent to these four counties around Dublin presenting the movement of cattle within them. At a later stage reports came in from thirty-four counties as to the condition of those counties and as to the reports of those officers, but nothing was reported to be bad except upon this farm at Swords. That, I think, as far as we have gone, pretty well sums up, shortly of course, the action of the Vice-President in that matter. I think I can put certain points I want him to answer into the form of questions. A good deal has been said in the course of question and answer as to certain rumours—unofficial information, which was given to the President of the Board of Agriculture in this country, and he has made certain denials in the matter. Of course in these matters you cannot always have the best official accurate information on everything. You have sometimes to be content with something which is less than absolute accuracy. You may have suspicions, you may have rumours, and there is every gradation between mere suspicion and rumour and something that approaches almost to certainty without getting the full official signature. There is this difference, too, between this country and Ireland. We are a silent people. We think and we act. The Irish talk. I do not say they do not act too, but they talk very freely, and what is a remarkable thing to me is that this farm is only seventeen miles from Dublin, and is only ten miles from a herd of cattle belonging to the Department, far more valuable than all the cattle on the farm with which we are dealing. It seems to me a most remarkable thing that though these cattle were infected, and must have been infected for some time—we do not know how long—no rumour of this sort should have leaked out in the neighbourhood, nothing should have been known by the veterinary officer of the county, and ho word or rumour should have come in any sense to the Department from that infected district, although there was another farm as well in the district also infected. I should like him to tell us very frankly whether, officially or unofficially, or even in the matter of rumour, he heard nothing at all, before this telegram from England, as to the disease which had developed in Ireland.

There is a further point in connection with this. He has told us that on the 22nd when the cattle were sent off, they were visited on the farm by a person called "a knowledgeable man." He examined them and found that six cattle were suffering from timber tongue. We call it in some parts wooden tongue. I suppose it is the same disease. I am told it is very seldom you find so considerable a number as six timber tongues in one herd, and that might have aroused anyhow the suspicions even of those who have less knowledge than the knowledgeable gentleman. It is certainly rather a remarkable fact that on that very day these cattle were sent out of the country, although it was known by these people that there was something wrong with them. I do not know whether they follow the practice which I believe previously existed in Ireland, and borne testimony to by the Chief Clerk of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland. I am quoting from his evidence before the Committee on Foot-and-Mouth Disease. He says:—

The second point is this: Why was there so very long a delay on the part of the Vice-President in taking any effective action after having received a telegram on the Thursday? There I am rather assisted by what the Vice-President told us about veterinary officers, of whom he seems to have a large supply, sent to the infected place to examine the cattle as required, because, of course, in this matter rapidity is of the essence of action. This disease is most infectious and most contagious, and spreads with remarkable rapidity, and when it has once spread it is exceedingly difficult to arrest its further progress. It is a matter where you want really Napoleonic rapidity of action, and you cannot imagine Napoleon sitting down, as the Vice-President did for forty-eight hours at least, waiting until he got what he calls effective telegrams from this side of the water, before apparently he takes any steps whatever, not only to try to locate but to make preparations for dealing with this most insidious foe to all cattle and animal owners, because he had notice at least that this disease came from Ireland. He was at least put upon inquiry by the telegram he received, and I should have thought that, having this band of veterinary surgeons and so on in Dublin, and also having these local veterinary officers attached to counties who, I understand, are appointed either by the Selection Board, or else the Board have a veto on their nomination, at least he might at once have instituted inquiries. He might have sent people about to obtain information. He says it was only rumour, and therefore he did nothing at all. I think a great deal of light is thrown upon his action by something he did later, because on 3rd July he said:—

The thirty-four inspectors referred to were county inspectors of police, who were put in motion at my request. They were not veterinary inspectors.

I see. I think I am justified in saying it is not clear from the Report, but that does not matter for the purpose of my argument. The right hon. Gentleman went on that they did this because there were rumours that there was foot-and-mouth disease in Ireland. He told us not long before that he could not act upon rumours, and now he says he is going to send out notice to every county, because there were rumours. He may say that at that time he knew something about the outbreak at Swords, which is about sixteen or eigheen miles from Dublin. That might have sharpened his action, and much might have been saved if he had acted upon the rumours at an earlier stage and caused inquiry to be made by the police, or inspectors, or veterinary officers. I am not for a moment making the charge against the right hon. Gentleman which was made, I think, by the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. William O'Brien). He accused him of panic administration, of having found a certain amount of disease on one farm near Dublin, and of having then involved the whole country in one general ban. I am not going to say that at all, because I think those measures were exceedingly necessary, but I do say that I think if he had taken measures earlier, it might have been possible for these panic measures, as they have been called, to have been less stringent, and a great deal of money might have been saved to exporters in Ireland.

The other point I want to deal with is this: I put it in the form of a question. Why did the cattle exported from Ireland escape detection at the port itself? I need not remind Hon. Members from Ireland, because they know very well, but perhaps the rest of the House does not know it so well, that these cattle exported from Ireland have to be inspected before they leave the port. When they are inspected, they are branded so that every single one of these cattle has to pass under the eyes of some officer. Now the question is why was there no discovery made that these cattle were in a parlous state when leaving Ireland? The symptoms of foot-and-mouth disease are, I suppose, well known. There are two ways of detecting it. One is through the limping of the animal. I do not know that from my own knowledge. I quote from the Report of the Committee on Foot-and-Mouth Disease, in which they lay stress on the fact that the animal limps badly, and on the fact that when the disease is more advanced saliva is exuded from the mouth. One would have thought that either of these two symptoms would be obvious to any trained man. He would either observe the limping or the saliva coming from the mouth. Anyhow, if any observations were made, they were passed by. Then comes the question how far the disease had developed, whether it was in such a stage that it might escape the observation of the most acute-eyed veterinary officer. The Report says:— disease either did nothing at all or nothing effective to stop these cattle going. What is rather a remarkable thing is this: I have alluded to the fact that there had been no outbreak in Ireland since 1884, and it may be, therefore, quite possible that the Department had become a little slack or careless about a disease which had not broken out for so many years. It is very natural to suppose that a thing that has not happened for twenty-eight years is never going to happen again. It is very likely indeed that they would not have in their minds the necessity of looking out for those symptoms if for twenty-eight years there had been nothing of the kind. What I wish to call attention to is this: Really there was something in the nature of a warning given to the Department and to the right hon. Gentleman in the evidence given by Mr. Cantrell. The Chairman asked him this question:— symptoms of foot-and-mouth disease, and indeed it is one of the suggestions made in the Report of the Committee that circulars should be sent out reminding officers what the symptoms are. That shows that the Committee were impressed by the fact that there might be ignorance on the point. Anyhow the right hon. Gentleman knew from the Report that the danger had been suggested, and that ought to have put him on his guard, as there might be veterinary officers who were not very well acquainted with the disease, and who, at any rate, had had no experience of it. The next point with which I wish to deal is one that is left rather in obscurity by the answers of the Vice-President. We have it stated in the Report of this Committee that the period during which the virus remains active is one not exceeding four months. We have had since 1908 in this country an Order of the Department of Agriculture admitting the import of foreign hay and straw only from certain scheduled countries, and the right hon. Gentleman seems very doubtful, whether these Orders have been passed in Ireland or not. In reply to a question by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Chaplin)—

Cumberland—

It goes on:—

"Very little English hay or straw comes into Ireland."

That answer seems to suggest that the Order had not been issued before, but that the right hon. Gentleman excuses himself on the very familiar ground that very little of it came into Ireland; and if not, was that Order enforced, because it is very well known that infection might come in through foreign hay and straw. Why was it that it was only when this outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease took place that the Order was put in force? I suggest that if this Order was put in force in Ireland as it was in England very likely we might have escaped this infection, and I invite explanation upon that point also from the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman has said that a charge of connivance has been made on the part of the Department. I do not make any such charge. If it were conceivable that there should be anything like connivance on the part of the Department then, for a crime so gross against humanity, the right hon. Gentleman ought not only to be put out of his office, but ought to be slaughtered and limed as much as any of the cattle which he ordered to be slaughtered and limed. But what arises from the facts is a certain indifference and apathy on the part of the right hon. Gentleman, that he has wrapped himself too much in official reticence and distance, that he will only take information when it comes properly docketed and on official paper, and that he is not prepared to pay attention to rumours or stories which might disclose the truth. He is too sceptical. Scepticism, however useful it may be to a theologian, is very dangerous to a Minister. I should like, therefore, to have a very full statement from the right hon. Gentleman on these points. There has been a very good Committee, with two hon. Members on this side of the House, investigating the whole subject of foot-and-mouth disease. It made certain recommendations which I believe have not been carried out. But I think we ought to have a Select Committee of this House investigating two things: First, owing to the great loss thrown on this country I do not think that people here will be satisfied until a Committee has been appointed to investigate all the conditions and facts connected with this outbreak in Ireland; I think also that the relation and connection between these two Departments should be investigated. That might throw a very useful light on future legislation, among other things, considering the rapidity with which this virus is transmitted, on the question of having four different Boards of Agriculture—for England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. I invite the right hon. Gentleman to make a clean breast of the whole thing. I want to know the whole truth about this matter. We are all very conscious of our own infirmities, and he knows very well that we are much more likely to forgive the right hon. Gentleman if he frankly admits to us any lâches or negligence which he has to admit, and for which he apologises; but I assure him that every word he says and every sentence he utters will be very carefully and critically scrutinised by every man in this country who is connected with agriculture and is interested in agricultural conditions.

The hon. Member who has just sat down has suggested, and I think that the Committee will agree, that if the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture in Ireland were guilty of connivance he ought to be slaughtered and limed. I will leave it to the hon. Member himself to suggest what ought to be done with one who puts before the Committee the idea that the Vice-President has been guilty of something not much less bad—that is to say, apathy and neglect—if the Vice-President is not so guilty. I think there should be at least an apology. Of course the hon. Gentleman is a party man, and comes down to make a party speech; and if I were in Opposition I doubt if I should make as good a speech. But there are other hon. Members on these benches, and among them I appeal particularly to the hon. Member for Wilton (Mr. C. Bathurst), who defeated me in a recent election, and who used to go about the constituency saying that if he were returned to the House of Commons he would not be a party man in agricultural matters, but would try to form an agricultural group.

I can assure the House that I never suggested to my Constituents that I intended to form a group, but that I intended to act as an agricultural representative.

The hon. Member is an agriculturist first and a politician afterwards. I hope that he will be fortunate enough to catch your eye, and take part in this Debate, for I would ask him if he really agrees with the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. W. Peel), and I would ask the same question of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Strand (Mr. Long). The hon. Member began his remarks by saying that he did not believe that such a thing could go on within ten miles of the Department without the Department knowing something about it, and that it was impossible that no rumour reached the Department.

I referred first of all to the definite rumour which reached the Department here, and if that had been in order I would have dealt with it. That being so, it did seem to be extraordinary, considering what human nature and what Irishmen are, that this disease should be going on and that nothing should be said about it.

We have only a limited time at our disposal. Nearly one hour of it has elapsed. A number of hon. Members wish to speak, and I would there- fore appeal that there should be no interruption.

I never interrupt. I merely interrupted before because I thought that the hon. Member was misrepresenting me.

The first rumour stated to have reached the Board of Agriculture in England was categorically denied by the President of the Board of Agriculture, and the rumour, about which a question was asked the other day, as to whether the Agricultural Department in Ireland had or had not received it, was also categorically denied by the right hon. Gentleman the Vice-President (Mr. T. W. Russell). It is carrying the party spirit somewhat too far to again repeat the question, though I have no doubt the Vice-President will give the full statement that has been asked for. But the point to which I wish particularly to call the attention of the House is whether, in the opinion of those best able to judge, the right hon. Gentleman could or could not have done more than he did between the Thursday and the Monday, when the animals were slaughtered. The information was not received until after the office was closed on the Thursday, and on the Friday I do not see what more the right hon. Gentleman could have done? What could he have done?

I told you.

What did the right hon. Gentleman do? He sent over his chief inspector to Liverpool to make inquiries. You cannot deal with the general statement that foot-and-mouth disease is. probably present in Ireland, Scotland, or England; and, therefore, the right hon. Gentleman did what he could do, and sent to Liverpool his inspector to find out where the cattle had actually come from. On the Saturday, when he had plain information that foot-and-mouth disease had appeared, he then sent his whole staff into four different counties, and by Sunday afternoon he had the information, and by Monday the animals were slaughtered. I think it will be agreed that this was a good piece of administrative work, and whether hon. Members agree with the politics of the right hon. Gentleman is not to the point. The hon. Member for Wilton (Mr. C. Bathurst) was a scientific member of the Committee, and I appeal to him whether, in his opinion, it was not a good piece of administrative work. The other points raised by the hon. Member in regard to the port of embarkation are extremely important, and perhaps we may make something out as to what happened at Liverpool when the cattle were landed. These are, as I said, extremely important questions, but it is hardly fair to make them party questions. The hon. Member for Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien) accused the Vice-President of going too fast, and the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Peel) says he did too little, but I hope credit will be given for the good administrative work that has been done.

1.0 P.M.

I am not interested in the party recriminations which occupied so large a share of the speech of the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Peel). The principal interest I have in the matter is not to wrangle over how this misfortune occurred, but to see how far the consequences, so far as Ireland is concerned, can now be mitigated—mitigated as far as possible and as quickly as possible. In reference to the remarks made by the hon. Member, I desire to say that we in Ireland have naturally quite as vital an interest as the hon. Gentleman himself or his colleagues in England in seeing that every possible precaution should be taken to guard against the spread of cattle disease, which is the greatest scourge that could befall Ireland. Therefore, in that particular respect, the interests of Ireland and the interests of England are absolutely one. Our contention in this matter is that, in the beginning at all events, somebody blundered and that somebody lost his head, with the extraordinary consequence that because an outbreak of disease was reported from one particular farm in one parish in the whole of Ireland, the entire country, suddenly and without a moment's notice, found its principal trade brought to an absolute dead stop—a trade which represents, I think, something like £18,000,000 a year of Irish exports. We say, taking quite a different view from the hon. Member, that the dead set made against Ireland is an excessively unfair and altogether unnecessary one. The hon. Member admitted that foot-and-mouth disease has broken out in England again and again within the past few years, but nobody lost his head over it, and nobody proposed that the whole trade of the country should be penalised. A sanitary cordon was drawn round the infected areas; every possible precaution was taken to stamp the plague out most sternly within those areas, and within the region of 10 or 15 miles around. But what I would point out to the Committee-is this, that on the occasion of those out breaks in England nobody ever dreamed that because cattle disease had broken out on a particular farm in Cumberland or in Yorkshire, the trade of Liverpool or even of London should be laid under a general ban. I think it is now confessed that, as to thirty-one out of the thirty-two-counties of Ireland, this Order forbidding the export of livestock was a cruel wrong.

I only undertake to speak for the South of Ireland, because it is the district with which I am best acquainted. It is a well ascertained fact that no outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has taken place in the South of Ireland within the memory of living man, and even on the occasion of the outbreak in 1884 the district of Cork was absolutely immune. It is the healthiest country in the world. Even in the present instance more than a week has now passed, in which period there has been ample time for the disease to develop itself, yet up to this hour there has not been a single case reported throughout the wide stretch of Munster. Nevertheless, because on one farm in the county of Dublin, 160 miles away, a case is reported, the vast cattle trade of Cork is brought to an absolute stop, the cattle boats are left idle, thousands of cattle are left on the quays, fairs are suspended, many thousands of pounds are lost, and the shippers and all the farming community of the provinces of Ulster and Connaught have been subjected to the very same loss and injustice. What we are most anxious to know is not anything as to the past; I dare say the Vice-President of the Irish Department did his best, but he is not altogether his own master—none of us are. What we are anxious about is that at once, and candidly, both the Irish Department and the English Board of Agriculture should acknowledge to the world that Ireland, outside this one portion, is absolutely and perfectly free from this disease. We ask next that the restrictions on the export of fat cattle for immediate slaughter should be as quickly as possible removed. We are grateful for the substantial, although limited concession, that was announced yesterday by the President of the Board of Agriculture, although foreign countries are enjoying that privilege at the present moment, but we recognise that the President of the Board has shown a good deal of sympathy and of consideration for Ireland in difficult circumstances. We ask him and the Vice- President of the Department to go further and to take their courage in both hands, and immediately to make some substantial provision for the resumption of the far more important trade of store cattle upon which three-fourths or five-sixths of the Irish farmers mainly depend for their live lihood. We ask that the two Boards in England and Ireland should at once authorise the resumption of store cattle exports, of course under proper restrictions and subject to a certain period of probation as to grazing in England under the super vision of the Board of Agriculture. Frankly we cannot think that the Irish Department, at all events in the beginning of this trouble, guarded the best interests of Irish agriculture as they have the right and the duty to do. I should not in the least copy the suggestion of the hon. Member above the Gangway that we should propose to slaughter and bury in quick lime the Vice-President of the Board, but this much I do say, that in my judgment any Minister representing Ireland ought to have resigned his office rather than be a consenting party at a moment's notice to a sort of general boycott of the whole trade of Ireland. However, whatever may be said as to the mistakes of the past, and happily we in Ireland, with all our faults, have not a very long memory for past mistakes, we must insist that if not only the cattle trade, but the solvency of the Irish farmers, is not to be seriously endangered—

What about the English farmers?

They are very well able to take care of themselves. We, unfortunately, are under infinitely more difficulties and are an infinitely poorer country. I would ask the Vice-President with the President of the English Department at once and resolutely to come to the rescue of the Irish cattle trade, and, so far as they are concerned, that they will make it clear that this most unfair and most unnecessary boycott of the whole trade of Ireland should be abandoned, and abandoned at once. I hope before this discussion comes to an end that the Vice-President will be able to give us some precise assurance that this will be done.

I think the right hon. Gentleman the Vice-President might have made some reply to the speech of my hon. Friend who opened this discussion, and that he should at once have spoken for the general information of the House, instead of permitting the hon. Member behind him to make a most undeserved attack upon my hon. Friend and state that he had endeavoured to turn this into a party question. On behalf of my hon. Friend and hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House I altogether repudiate that attack, which is without one single shadow of foundation. So long a period has now elapsed since we suffered from the ravages of this fell disease, with which we are now threatened again, that there are very few Members in this House, I think, old enough to recollect the enormous amount of loss and of suffering which was inflicted upon the country in those days. That is my apology, if apology is needed, in asking permission to intrude for a short time. I suspect there was nobody in the country more chiefly concerned or more actively engaged in the extirpation of this and other diseases of cattle in those days than I was. It is of vital importance, in my humble opinion, not only to the agricultural interests as a whole throughout the United Kingdom, but to the interests of the whole community, that the matter should be dealt with, and effectually, in as short a time as possible. It is so serious on this occasion because it has unhappily obtained a start before being detected, or, I will not say detected, but before it reached the knowledge of the Irish Department that it was already in existence in Ireland. It has got a start, and is allowed to be distributed in a number of different districts in England, and that is what constitutes the great danger, as when once it has established a footing, however small, no human being can say how long it will be before you are able to eradicate it. I am in opposition to some of the demands' my hon. Friend (Mr. William O'Brien) below the Gangway, if I may call him so, has made upon the Vice-President to-day, and that were made upon the President of the Board yesterday, but I hope he will forgive me and will remember that I am so in opposition upon grounds perhaps of greater experience in connection with the misfortune with which we are now threatened than he has himself.

The present outbreak reminds me very much of a similar outbreak in the year 1892. The disease at that time was detected among Danish cattle on the 4th February in the lairs of the Metropolitan Cattle Market at Islington. These animals had been exposed—for the disease, I presume, had manifested itself—in the market on the previous Monday, the 1st February. At that time we were engaged in warfare for the extirpation of pleuropneumonia, and it so happened that, under the restrictions necessary for eradicating that disease, London was within a zone from which the movement of all cattle whatever was prohibited. That was an advantage not enjoyed at Liverpool the other day, and, so far, it is the more serious now than it was then. But although the movement of cattle was prohibited, that was not the case in regard to sheep, and sheep distributed the disease widely among many counties in England, especially in the south. So much so, indeed, that the disease, which was manifested on 4th February, was not overtaken and wiped out until nearly the month of June. It spread to no less than fifteen different counties, and there were ninety-five outbreaks altogether. I have thought it right to mention these facts to the Committee in the hope that they will enable hon. Members to curb the very natural desire which everybody must necessarily feel to be relieved as soon as possible from the restrictions for dealing with this disease, which are always harassing and troublesome, and give rise to vehement demands, like those we have already heard this afternoon, upon the Minister in charge, sometimes to abrogate them at a time when it still remains his duty strictly to enforce them. Therefore, I have given the experience of the last outbreak in the hope that hon. Members will remember that if the disease is to be overcome, as it must be and can be, we must be prepared at the same time to submit, with all the patience we can command, to restrictions which are absolutely necessary, however harassing to the general public they may be.

I now pass to the speech of my hon. Friend who opened the Debate. On the whole, I think, the record that he gave of what has occurred was accurate. I share with him the opinion that it is unfortunate, and certainly to some extent curious, that no rumour whatever of the existence of the disease reached the Irish Department earlier than it did. For there remains the fact undoubtedly that from a farm at Swords, on the information of the Vice-President himself, cattle were moved which were known to be sick at the time on 22nd June, but it was not until 27th June that the right hon. Gentleman received positive information from this side of the water that those animals had undoubtedly got foot-and-mouth disease. We were told also that this knowledgeable man, whoever he was, had been there, and himself detected what he called timber tongue. Everybody who has had experience of this matter knows that timber tongue is really the beginning of the disease first manifesting itself. That was on 22nd June, and yet nothing reaches the Irish Department until the 27th June. I wish to ask the Vice-President one or two questions to try to elicit information for myself on the subject. I do not know exactly what are the powers of the Administrative Department in Ireland for requiring this information to be laid before them by anyone who possesses it. There are great powers in England. I do not know if they have precisely the same power in Ireland. I do not wish to cast any reflection whatever upon Ireland, or to speak in any sense offensively to Members who come from that country, but we know that in Ireland a good deal of intimidation exists on certain questions, and I have asked myself, is it possible that some of the neighbouring people may have known of this, and yet been afraid of giving information to the authorities.

Not at all.

I was about to say I may be totally wrong. But that makes it still more curious that no information whatever reached the Board of Agriculture in Ireland. It is hardly conceivable that in any district with an active local authority, as most of the authorities are active in England, foot-and-mouth disease should exist in their immediate neighbourhood for nearly a week without anyone having the smallest idea of it. At the moment our first object is to hamper no one unnecessarily, so that all their efforts may be directed to accomplishing the extirpation of the disease, both in Ireland and in England; but some day or other we shall want to know how it is that this very extraordinary state of things existed in Ireland. I believe it to be quite impossible for such a thing to happen in England. It never has happened, to the best of my knowledge, at any period in the past. Turning to another question I am anxious, if it can be done, that the question of the prohibition of the landing of hay and straw on the following day should be cleared up. I asked a question the other night, and I understood from the Vice-President that the prohibition had been made quite recently.

Under the Order of 1908, as it has been amended, the Order applying to Great Britain and Ireland, the importation of foreign hay is interdicted. The Order that I issued on the Cumberland outbreak taking place was to prohibit the importation of British hay and straw to Ireland.

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for his explanation. I come to the subject of the export of store cattle being again permitted, a subject upon which the hon. Member was so anxious. The hon. Member compared this outbreak which has just occurred with two some more recent and isolated outbreaks which had occurred in England. He said no extreme measures of this kind were adopted in those cases, and he asked: "Why are you treating us in Ireland in a different manner; we are a poor country; the export of store cattle is vital to all our farmers; the greatest possible injury is being inflicted upon them, and they will undergo more suffering than the people in England?" Surely the answer to that is perfectly simple. We are at this moment face to face with a most serious outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in England. It has done incalculable mischief already, and is quite certain, before it is concluded,, to do a great deal more. We owe that misfortune beyond all question and all doubt to the fact that animals suffering from this disease in Ireland have been permitted to land in England unknown to the authorities. I am not in a position at present to say, whether rightly or wrongly, who can be blamed. Some day we shall know more about the matter than we do now. At any rate, there are the broad facts.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it has not been proved that the outbreak originated in Ireland?

There are the broad facts before us, and it is upon those facts that we say, so far as we are concerned, that we must object to that importation of store cattle; particularly because they are distributed all over the country. They are distributed among all the other herds in England, and in every county, both in Scotland and in England. The risk is too great for us to incur until we know that Ireland is in a safe condition to export these cattle again. We cannot take it on chance. You say you are a poor country, and it is of more importance to you than it is to the people of England. But you must remember that the amount of stock in England is incalculably greater than in Ireland. The amount of stock possessed by the farmers represents the whole of their cattle in all parts of the country, wherever they are engaged in that particular branch of agriculture, as a very large proportion of them are. Therefore I hope, whatever else may be done in regard to this matter, that the Government will exercise due care and great caution, and make no change in the present restrictions unless it can be absolutely stated that again Ireland is practically and, to all intents and purposes, safe. It may be, I sincerely hope it will be, the case that it will not take so long a time to control and extirpate this unfortunate outbreak in Ireland as undoubtedly would be necessary in England. Still, owing to the fact that it has got this start at Liverpool, the thing has been widely distributed in many parts of the country already. The disease is still, I believe, happily and mercifully, confined to a very small district in Ireland, so we are not asking too much as representatives of the English agricultural interest, with the fullest and greatest sympathy for Irish agriculturists, that at least a reasonable time shall be allowed before the restrictions are relaxed.

What would the right hon. Gentleman consider a reasonable time?

I could not possibly say without having all the information before me that is now, I imagine, only in the possession of the Agricultural Department in Ireland. I have asked the Vice-President to let us know his views, and the views of the Government, upon this question as early as he can. We are prepared on this side of the House to give all the support and assistance in our power to the Government entirely beyond and outside all party considerations in their endeavours, both in Ireland and in England, to cope with something which, if unhappily it cannot be stopped within a very reasonable time, will be a return to nothing short of a great national calamity—a national calamity which no one will regret more bitterly than I shall myself, seeing that I have spent many of the earlier years of my life endeavouring to achieve what was ultimately accomplished, namely, the extirpation of this disease from the country.

I desire to take part in this Debate as the president of the Cattle Traders' and Stock Breeders' Association of Ireland, and also as a member of the Committee of the Department on Foot-and-Mouth Disease in Ireland. No man in this House or outside is more anxious than I am to stamp out this disease, because, being connected with the livestock industry all my lifetime, and having had experience of the outbreak twenty-nine years ago in Ireland, I know what it means, not alone to the owners of livestock, but also to the men engaged in the meat trade, and to consumers generally. Hon. Members who are not connected with this industry can scarcely realise the importance which attaches to the management of cattle affairs. So far as Ireland is concerned, I agree with what has been said by some speakers, that this industry is the main industry there, and, therefore, that anything connected with it affects the whole country. The present outbreak is looked upon as a national calamity in Ireland: it touches almost everybody in the country. The hon. Gentleman who opened this Debate seemed to think it was rather an outrage that the outbreak should occur in Ireland. He criticised the administration, but there have been many outbreaks in England, and, so far as Ireland is concerned, we are much more free from all kinds of cattle disease than any other country in Europe. As a matter of fact we have had less anthrax, less tuberculosis, far and away less swine fever, and less of all kinds of cattle disease than England. I think one of the inquiries that the Vice-President of the Department ought to make is as to whether or not the disease was imported from England. I cannot see any reason why Ireland, where we have been free from this disease for thirty years, should now have an outbreak, and it is very important to know how that came about. The disease could not have come from Ireland, because it did not exist in Ireland.

It did not exist in England.

I beg your pardon, you had an outbreak at Penrith a short time ago, and there was an Order issued for the prevention of the import of hay into Ireland. There was some confusion about that Order; it was not on foreign hay, but on the import of British hay. I do not agree with the theory of the scientists that this disease can only be contracted through infection. I think there is a period in the lifetime of man and of animals when disease will come from some sort of indigenous cause. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. C. Bathurst) does not agree with that. Perhaps he is a scientific member of the Committee who advocates the other view, and when he comes to speak perhaps he will be able to explain the reason why we got this disease in Ireland if it did not come from England. I think it did come from England, and I think the English people should bear the brunt of the responsibility. Something was said by the hon. Member who moved the Amendment about the existence of four Boards of Agriculture, and he contended that it would be better only to have one Board of Agriculture. I do not agree with that at all. However that may be, we want to get rid of this disease as soon as possible, and we want to get the restrictions removed as soon as possible. Every country has a right to deal with its own different localised circumstances. The whole system of government now all over the world is to decentralise as far as possible and to give local autonomy, and that is the principle upon which the cattle industry ought to be managed for the three Kingdoms. I would like to point out, as a member of the Irish Department's Committee on Foot-and-Mouth Disease, that we received evidence as to how these cases were dealt with in England. I think that the same rules which apply in England ought also to apply in Ireland. If the disease was localised and certain precautions taken, and a ring fence drawn round the centre of the disease and all kinds of communication prevented with what is called the infected area, surely the whole cattle trade of Ireland ought not to be paralysed for a length of time because one district happened to be infected. I hope the Vice-President will agree with me in seeing that as soon as possible, and consistent with public safety, the restrictions are removed. I am as anxious as anybody to have this disease ended and stamped out. It is in nobody's interest to keep the disease alive. It is to all our interests to have it ended, arid, with the adoption of special precautions, I see no reason why our great cattle trade should be dislocated and stopped because it happens that certain places have disease for a while.

During the last months I think I am correct in stating that a record has been created in Dublin in the number of cattle exported. That export is stopped at a time when business is at its height, both at our side of the Channel and at this side of the Channel. When we are in a position to remove these restrictions or to relax them we shall do so as soon as possible. Some people seem to think that this is entirely an Irish Debate. It is nothing of the kind. The English and Scotch agriculturists are almost as much interested in it as we are. This is not peculiarly an Irish question. The English people want meat, and we are prepared to give it to them; the English graziers want stores, and we are prepared to give them; and I think in these circumstances it must be quite evident to everybody who has the slightest knowledge of the business that the most genuine co-operation will be required, and will be, I am sure, forthcoming both from the Department for Agriculture in Ireland and the Department for Agriculture in England. I have had experience during the length of time I have been in this House, now nearly twenty years, of both the English and Irish Boards of Agriculture. My business has brought me into relation with both these Departments, and I have always found both Boards acting in the most friendly way with one another for the purpose of bringing everything in connection with their business into harmonious communication and co-operation. I agree with a good deal of what is said in this Debate, but I hope no undue obstacle will be put into force to prevent the relaxation of these restrictions as soon as possible. If I might make a suggestion it would be that the right hon. Gentleman the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture in Ireland should look up what occurred exactly in regard to these outbreaks that took place recently in England, and that he should follow out the line of action pursued in respect of these outbreaks. All I ask for is that we should get exactly the same treatment as was given to agriculturists in similar circumstances in the case of this country. I cooperated with the Vice-President of the Board of Agriculture in Ireland in connection with this foot-and-mouth disease, and he knows I have some knowledge of what I am speaking about, and whilst I agree that we ought to do everything as far as possible, and as well as we can to put an end to this disease, I press upon the Vice-President and this Committee the necessity of relaxing, when it is safe to do so, all those restrictions with regard to the import of Irish livestock and Irish stores into this country. I trust that this Debate will elucidate this question, and I am sure the Vice-President will come out of it well. I think no man could have done more in the circumstances. I happen to know this place. I know everybody here imagines that Irishmen want to do as well as they can, and I do not know anyone who does not. The man mainly responsible for this outbreak in Ireland thought he could get out of the trouble by not reporting it. It is so long since we had foot-and-mouth disease in Ireland that many farmers do not know what it is. I have had experience of it; it is very easily diagnosed, and its symptoms are calculated to catch your notice, but a man who has never seen the disease does not know what it is. In the case of sheep scab a man does not report it. This disease is far more dangerous and deplorable in its consequences than sheep scab. I think, under these circumstances there should be some allowance made for the condition of things in Ireland. I think the inspectors know their business, and they do not want any advice from me, but it must not be forgotten that there is a period of incubation with regard to this disease. We went into this matter very carefully in Committee, and the experts could not agree as to the exact time when the disease will show itself. There is an old proverb, "Doctors differ and patients die."

If the experts differ, surely we who are only laymen can scarcely come to any conclusion on the subject. I believe the administrative functions in connection with this outbreak were fairly carried out, and I hope the result of this Debate will be that the mind of the Committee will be clear, and we shall be able to prove that the Vice-President has done his business as well as possible. I think, however, he has imposed his restrictions a little too harshly. After all, the people must be fed and the men in business must be looked after. These things are equally as important as stopping the cattle disease, and the convenience of the men in the meat trade and the consumers should be considered. All these things have to be balanced up by a level-headed administration, and, besides this, they need the cooperation of all concerned. In conclusion, I wish to say, so far as I am individually concerned—I think I have a right to express the opinion of those with whom I am associated—that we are quite satisfied that the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture did the best he could under the circumstances, and the steps he has taken will eliminate this disease and enable the cattle trade in Ireland to be carried on in the future as it has been in the past.

An hon. Member opposite has warned me not to approach this subject from a partisan point of view. I do not intend to approach this question in that way, and I assume the hon. Member and the Committee will admit that it is still open to us who represent English constituencies, and more particularly agricultural constituencies, in this House to offer criticism if it is due upon the administration of the Department of Agriculture in Ireland. Whatever may happen to another measure now before this House of very great importance to the destinies of the two countries, I hope it will still be open to us, in matters that so seriously affect British and Irish agriculture, to have some sort of control by criticism upon the work of the Irish Agricultural Department. The hon. Member for North Bucks (Sir H. Verney) referred to a suggestion which was made by myself a few days ago as to some information having been received by the English Board of Agriculture which might have been transmitted to the Irish Department. The hon. Member's description of what he called a rumour was not strictly accurate. It has been clearly ascertained since the explanation was given officially in this House that the person who gave that information was a person of absolute credibility and of some considerable status in the important profession of grazier which he carries on in Scotland. That, in fact, he did give this information upon Wednesday last, and not upon Thursday, as announced here, and that he did refer specifically to Ireland as a possible and probable source of the English outbreak is beyond doubt.

May I ask the hon. Member if this gentleman ever gave the slightest information to the Irish Department of Agriculture?

I have not suggested that.

Then he ought to have done so.

That information ought to have been transmitted at any rate to the Irish Department to have enabled them to act at once. The informa- tion I have now given to the House has been confirmed by telegram received by the English Board of Agriculture, which specifically refers to the interview between this gentleman and the officials of the English Board on Wednesday last, and it is referred to as being important information. I should very soon get out of order if I referred at further length to this particular incident, but it illustrates the eminent desirability of the course which my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr. Peel) has referred, namely, the advisability of setting up at an early date a Select Committee to consider the best mode of co-operation between the two Departments representing the two countries. This question of foot-and-mouth disease is every bit of as much importance to English consumers and stock owners as it is to those in Ireland, but I fully admit that those in Ireland are likely to suffer very serious loss owing to such an outbreak as this which has occurred in county Dublin. It is a matter which always affects the very commercial and industrial existence of Ireland that such outbreaks should be dealt with drastically and confined within the narrowest possible limits. It also affects not only the interests of our stock owners, but the interests of every consumer in this country. The hon. Member who has just addressed the House suggested that this outbreak in county Dublin originated in England, and he went on to give as his reason that hay and straw or some other foodstuff might have been conveyed from the Cumberland outbreak to these premises in county Dublin upon which the Irish outbreak took place. The Penrith outbreak occurred, as we know from official sources, after the disease was known to have existed on the Swords Farm in county Dublin, so that clearly cannot be the origin of the disease. He also suggested—I think it is interesting information to this House—that a herd, by which I presume he means a farm servant, on this Swords Farm had knowledge of the existence of this disease possibly for some time, and thought he would get out of his difficulties by not reporting it. He went on to suggest it might be only due to this man that serious punishment should be inflicted upon him. I am going to ask whether serious punishment is going to be inflicted upon him, because it looks as if, owing to his neglect of a statutory duty, this disease is not only a matter of serious alarm in Ireland, but in England as well. Under the Diseases of Animals Act, 1894, which applies to Ireland as well as to England and Scotland, by Section 4, it is enacted:—

I think I am justified in asking whether, among other courses, the Department propose to take, they propose, if only to deter others from the same dangerous secrecy, to prosecute this man. The hon. Gentleman, the Member for Cork (Mr. W. O'Brien), I am bound to say, rather alarmed me by his proposals with regard to store cattle. There is a strong case with regard to fat cattle which has not the same force as regards store cattle. We depend very largely in this country upon fat cattle from Ireland, and I hope whatever may be the gap between us in the future that trade will extend and develop, because I think it is just the sort of trade every patriot would like to see increased. As regards store cattle, may I remind the Committee of the fact that we have had some very serious experience in the past history of this disease of the effect of not taking strong measures in Ireland in order to prevent the extension of the disease to other parts of the United Kingdom. It is perfectly true there has been no known or clearly ascertained outbreak in Ireland since 1884, but the worst outbreak on record at all in the United Kingdom took place in Ireland in 1872. There was a total number of outbreaks of 14,854 in Ireland, and the animals affected were 215,927. It spread all over the country, and it was at that time deemed to be the source of a very serious outbreak that subsequently occurred in England. Even in 1883, less than thirty years ago, there was a serious outbreak in Ireland which spread widely over the whole country, affecting 114,500 animals on 3,510 farms in twenty different counties. I, for one, consider it is dangerous not to treat Ireland as one entity for this purpose and not to extend the restrictions over the whole country, because you have atmospheric conditions existing in Ireland which tend to a far greater extent to the spread of the disease than do any similar conditions existing in any other part of the United Kingdom. Although I think from the time the right hon. Gentleman became officially apprised of the existence of the disease at Liverpool, and of the knowledge that it certainly came from Ireland, he took strenuous steps in order to prevent the further spread of the disease, yet in fairness to our English stock owners and to our English consuming public I am bound to say that the very facts which the right hon. Gentleman stated only two days ago in this House indicate there is a laxity in the administration, and certainly a lack of knowledge existing among the officials of his Department which ought to be remedied at the earliest possible moment. The right hon. Gentleman told the House two days ago it was quite possible the disease might have existed upon the Swords Farm before the Department discovered it on the Sunday, and he went on to say he had ordered the strictest investigation, and the inquiry was now going on. I hope he may be able to tell us this afternoon some of the results of that inquiry. He admitted that a wholly unqualified person attended diseased stock upon the farm, and that his Department had ascertained that certain cattle which were sick had on that very day been sent to Dublin from that farm. He went on to say:—

I think the hon. Gentleman will admit I could not have taken action by way of issuing an Order until I had found if the disease existed in Ireland, and up to Sunday I had no knowledge of the existence of the disease in Ireland. I could not issue an Order without some evidence of the existence of the disease.

I am afraid I must join issue with the right hon. Gentleman on that question, because, considering the extreme activity of this disease, and in view of the enormous risks to the flocks and herds of the two countries, I do honestly think that when an outbreak takes place immediate action is justified, even when the facts are not clearly ascertained as to the exact outbreak from which the disease comes. There was, I suggest, sufficient information in the hands of the Department to justify their at once taking the strenuous action which they took subsequently, and to inquire in every county throughout Ireland through the medium of their police inspectors whether the disease was known to exist in any part of the country. I should like to ask in this connection why these thirty-four administrative counties were not visited by the police inspectors when first the Department received information from Liverpool that the disease there was probably due to consignments that had come from Ireland.

"Probably due."

It was known that the disease had come either from Scotland or, more likely, from Ireland, and I suggest that in the case of this highly infectious disease the Department were thoroughly justified in instituting some inquiry immediately, instead of waiting till the following Monday before taking any steps.

I did not wait till the Monday.

The actual Order was only issued on the following Monday, and, even assuming that the right hon. Gentleman did not feel justified in taking such action at once, he will not deny that the existence of a serious disease of some kind was known, or rather it was known that there was in existence a serious disease upon one of the farms on the very day when the first lot of cattle was shipped to Liverpool—on Saturday, 22nd June. Whatever we may say about the information as to the disease, it is almost incredible to believe that animals, which subsequently developed all the symptoms of this disease, came from this farm on the day when the disease appeared to have been rampant there, passed all the officials at the Irish ports, and were shipped to England as absolutely free from disease. It is difficult to believe under such circumstances that the officials really understood their business or were fully cognisant of the symptoms of the disease.

The animals were passed at the Liverpool market also.

At the moment I am criticising the Department which the right hon. Gentleman represents and not the English Department. I think it is quite possible we may have fair criticism to make on this very point as against the English Board, and I wish the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Agriculture was present in this House, because I think, in a case like this, it is right he should be here, bearing in mind that this is really one question as between the two countries. I have already drawn attention to the fact that the herd on the farm on which the disease existed gave no indication of his knowledge to anyone outside that farm. I am justified in asking why the owner of this farm—I do not know whether the occupier is also the owner—gave no indication of the existence of this disease either to the Department or to the local authority? Here was a disease, certainly not a common disease, which has very marked characteristics and symptoms which no one could fail to be impressed by. It is a rare disease in the two countries, but I do not think there is any disease which has more pronounced symptoms or is more calculated to cause the owner of the animal to inquire as to what the disease is. I should like to know what the owner of these animals was doing all this time while this disease was developing, and eventually raging upon his farm. We are told by the Chief Clerk of the right hon. Gentleman's Department that:

"All persons who have been in contact with animals on board ship in transit to or from any port in Great Britain would be required, as soon as they come back to the port in Ireland to disinfect themselves and their clothes. …. Those persons are very well known to the ship inspectors and the veterinary staff stationed at our cattle-exporting ports. There is a veterinary staff at every port in Ireland, as animals going from Ireland to great Britain are inspected and certified. … Likewise we have a staff of ship inspectors who inspect vessels and see that the animals are properly penned and that the vessels are properly cleansed and disinfected in accordance with the Regulations in the Transit Orders on both sides of the Channel."

But what were these ship inspectors doing if these animals were afflicted with a disease of a character so easily identified? The Chief Clerk goes on to say—

"All persons connected with the cattle trade, the drovers, the dealers, and the sales masters, are perfectly well known to our men at the ports."

If the information is so accurate, why was it necessary to send the chief officer of the Department and two inspectors over to Liverpool before any clear information could be obtained as to who was the actual dealer who disposed of these cattle in the Liverpool markets? There must have been some information in the hands of either the Department or the Port Authority to enable them to ascertain, without sending over to this country, who was the person who had been in charge of these affected animals.

Does the hon. Member forget that a telegram was sent to us asking us to send over inspectors?

Surely the fact that the right hon. Gentleman received the telegram asking that these inspectors should go over to Liverpool does not relieve his Department of responsibility? Surely the Irish Department does not simply or necessarily act on the request of another Department altogether, unless the right hon. Gentleman's Department is satisfied that that is the wisest and most proper course?

We did not believe at the time that the disease came from Ireland.

I take that from the right hon. Gentleman, but it is very difficult for me, after having sat on this Committee, and knowing something about the disease and the ease with which it may be communicated from one country to another—it is very difficult for me to believe that the officials of the right hon. Gentleman's Department could have been satisfied with any action which only deferred the moment at which the source of the disease could be ascertained in their own country. What I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman, and I think this is the only serious part of what he may possibly describe as my indictment, is this: Are his inspectors at the Port, are the veterinary officers of his Department, really qualified to carry out the important work they are asked to do? We have had some information about this from Mr. Robert Cantrell, the Chief Clerk of his Department, when he gave evidence before the Departmental Committee. We were very sorry to hear that a considerable number of persons who do not possess the diploma of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons are appointed as inspectors under the Irish Department. We know that a certain man, who has been described as a "knowledgeable person" and also as a quack doctor, did actually treat these cattle for some disease which he wrongly described as "timber tongue." That is only one indication of many that the animal doctors in Ireland are not very well acquainted with the symptoms of this disease. I should like to know whether the right hon. Gentleman considers that the bulk of his staff in Ireland do really know what the disease looks like, and would recognise it if they saw it. He is prepared to say officially that it has not existed in the country for twenty-eight years, and that very fact in itself must mean that a large number of the veterinary officials are not acquainted personally with the disease, and could only understand the symptoms if they are from time to time apprised by the Department of the nature of its symptoms.

I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether in Ireland the same steps are taken as are taken in this country, periodically to inform not merely the veterinary officers of the Board, but veterinary surgeons, and also to some extent stock owners, of the symptoms of foot-and-mouth disease, so that they cannot possibly make any mistake if it ever breaks out. What has recently happened in Ireland is a strong indication that there is a lack of knowledge on the part of those who have to carry out the administration of the Board. I should like to mention this: I am authorised to make it known to this House that there has been an element of suspicion on the part of many British stock owners as to the ignorance prevailing amongst the expert officials of the Board and among veterinary surgeons in Ireland as to foot-and-mouth disease. Only last autumn Mr. Manoel, who has a larger business as a veterinary surgeon than any other person in this country in the matter of inspecting pedigree stock for exportation abroad, received an inquiry from a veterinary surgeon in Ireland as to whether a certain disease which had been found amongst cattle in his district was or was not foot-and-mouth disease, and he proceeded to describe the well-known symptoms of this disease, indicating very strongly that there was actually in Ireland last autumn foot-and-mouth disease existing, of which neither this country nor the Irish Department had any cognisance whatever. I can give all the facts relating to that if the right horn Gentleman requires any further information. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why was it not given before now?"] It is not for me to explain that. For my purpose it is sufficient to indicate that there are, at any rate, some veterinary surgeons in Ireland who apparently do not know the disease when they see it. It is a strong argument for urging that information ought from time to time to be given to veterinary surgeons, and probably also to stock owners throughout the country, as to this disease. The right hon. Gentleman was asked yesterday as to the operation of the Hay and Straw Order of 1908 in Ireland. I think he will agree with me that he made a slight error in the answer which he gave to one of the hon. Members sitting on the Irish Benches. He was asked:—

It was the Cumberland outbreak. I did not say "the other day."

That is the way it is reported in the OFFICIAL REPORT. AS the right hon. Gentleman has admitted today, and as I tried to urge upon him at the time the answer was given, the very same Hay and Straw Order which has been in operation since 1908, as recently amended in England, has also been operative in Ireland, and in fact there is no foreign hay or straw whatever going into Ireland at the present time, and there has not been any such importation for many years past. There is only one qualification of that. There is only one kind of straw going in—that is straw for packing merchandise. That straw is known to come in many cases from Continental countries where foot-and-mouth disease is rampant at present. I think the right hon. Gentleman might with very great advantage inquire as to whether there was upon these infected premises at Swords, any of the straw which had been used for packing which had come from some foreign country. That is a possible source of the disease. As regards the Hay and Straw Order, it may interest the Committee to know that it does not apply to the United States, Canada, or Norway. I think it applies to every country in the world with those three exceptions. I do not know at the moment whether there is any foot-and-mouth disease in Norway. I should imagine not, or this Order would have been extended to that country. A suggestion was made from the Irish benches that the disease might be imported in litter. I think the right hon. Gentleman mistook for the moment what was intended by the word "litter." He referred at the time to straw used for packing. As a matter of fact, there is a very large amount of litter in the shape of peat-moss coming into Ireland from Holland, which at the moment is probably more seriously affected with foot-and-mouth disease than any other Continental country. The right hon. Gentleman might inquire, if he has not already done so, whether there is on these premises, or has been on the premises, any peat-moss litter which has come from Holland or any other Continental country.

None whatever.

At any rate, the right hon. Gentleman will agree that it is a possible source of disease, and it will be well worth his while to keep a somewhat suspicious eye upon it. During 1911, 2,712 tons of peat-moss litter were known to have gone to Ireland from Holland. He may or he may not think it advisable in the circumstances to put some embargo upon a dangerous cargo of that kind. There is one other matter to which I wish to refer. That is the somewhat alarming or regrettable ignorance apparently prevailing as to the proper way of dealing with premises upon which such an out break occurs in Ireland. I notice that the right hon. Gentleman admits that he called in the assistance of the Estates Commissioners in order to effect the slaughter—

No, no.

I will read the right hon. Gentleman's answer.

What the Estates Commissioners kindly offered to do was this. After the cattle had been slaughtered and buried, it was thought that infection might arise from the land itself being covered with the froth from the mouths of the cattle. They said they would be prepared to do for the Department what had been done in similar cases in England; that is, they were prepared, if they were given authority, to lime the land and so prevent crows and other birds possibly carrying any infection. It was that kind offer of which I at once availed myself. That was. the extent of the Land Commissioners' work. The whole of the slaughter of the cattle, and the dealing with the premises, and everything else, was done under the control of our chief veterinary inspector.

I agree that exactly the same thing was done in the case of the outbreak on the Rye Marshes last year. Of course, I fully accept the right hon. Gentleman's explanation. It did appear from the statement he made to the House as if the Department had had to seek advice from the Estates Commissioners as to the proper way of treating land in order to disinfect it and prevent the spread of the disease. Two factors are evolved from this discussion, and from this most unfortunate outbreak from which both countries are suffering, to both of which attention might with advantage be called. One is what appears to me to be the lack of close cooperation between the two Departments of Agriculture in the two countries, and the other is the lack of knowledge on the part of some of the officials in Ireland with regard to this extremely dangerous and infectious disease. In view of the facts which have now come to the knowledge of the public with regard to this outbreak, the time has come when every single veterinary official acting under the Department in Ireland ought to be a person duly qualified to carry out the serious and responsible duties which he is asked to perform, and, in the case of those who are not so qualified to-day, there ought to be given to them in every case a clear description of this particular disease, as well as the other more serious contagious diseases, but this disease in particular, in order that they may at once recognise, when disease arises upon any farm premises, that the symptoms are those of foot-and-mouth disease, and so be enabled to take prompt action and prevent the spread of the disease from the immediate locality where it breaks out. Forty years ago this disease was rampant throughout the whole of the United Kingdom, and at that time not only were our stock owners suffering irreparable loss, from the effect of which they did not recover for at least ten years subsequently, but meat in this country was approximating to something like famine prices, and therefore, in the interests both of stock owners and the consuming public, it is absolutely essential for the Departments in both countries to take not only stringent but prompt action when any such outbreak takes place, and so ensure that the disease shall be kept within the narrowest limits, and that what may prove to be a national calamity may not result from any lack of promptitude on the part of either Department.

I was rather glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Chaplin) tell the Committee that this question of foot-and-mouth disease in Ireland was not going to be made a party question, but I was rather inclined to withdraw my enthusiasm for that statement when I heard him say that he and his party were prepared to give every support to the Vice-President of the Department in putting down this outbreak. I am afraid there is a danger that the Vice-President of the Irish Department may allow himself to be overwhelmed by the pressure which will be brought to bear upon him in this Debate, and in the course of questions in the House from endless quarters which will result in restrictions being imposed upon the Irish trade. I hold no brief for the Vice-President of the Department, but at the same time he and his Department acted with the greatest prudence, caution and promptitude when the outbreak was brought to their notice, and it ought to be admitted in all quarters that the Vice-President is entitled to the thanks of everyone who is interested in the question for the way he has acted. We are all most grateful to him in Ireland for the action which he took to acquaint himself accurately with the seat of the outbreak, and to take precautions which made it impossible for the outbreak to spread to the rest of Ireland, but it is our duty in justice to the Irish trader to urge upon him the necessity of continually impressing on the President of the English Board the necessity for relaxing the restrictions in regard to the shipment of store cattle.

The store market will very shortly be opened, the great store trade with England will begin, and everyone will agree that it is a very important thing that only such necessary restriction and precautions should be enforced in this country as are necessary to protect stock from the danger of acquiring this disease. A great portion of the store cattle coming to the English market comes from the North of Ireland, where there is absolutely no trace whatever of the disease. There is no suggestion that there has been an outbreak in Ulster recently. At present the entire cattle trade of the North of Ireland is shut down by the fact that the President of the English Board has closed all British ports for the reception of Irish cattle. I would strongly urge on the Vice-President that in considering this question in consultation with his colleague in the English Board of Agriculture he should most strongly urge upon him the fact that, having taken prompt and effective measures, having enclosed the place where this disease was discovered to exist in England, and having included in his sanitary cordon a large area where there is no trace of the disease whatever, steps should be taken immediately by the English Department to relax the Orders which they have made closing down the ports to the reception of Irish store cattle. There are some weeks before the store trade will open, but the matter cannot be taken into consideration too soon, nor can a representation be too strongly made by the Vice-President to the English President that the ports should be opened. No doubt the restrictions in respect of fat cattle have been relaxed as from tomorrow, but under conditions which the Vice-President will admit are not very favourable to Ireland. The restrictions are necessary and reasonable, but I most strongly urge that they should not be too long permitted to exist. I should like the Vice-President to tell us what Orders are now in existence in England in regard to the ports of reception of store cattle, and how long those Orders are likely to remain in operation. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Chaplin), from a question he put the other day, seems to think there ought to be a prolonged period of restriction of the store trade cattle, and that is the danger I anticipate. He asked:— without the disease being noticed by the port inspectors? I am not very fond of indulging in tu quoque arguments, but what answer is there to the question how were these cattle passed by the market inspectors in Liverpool and by the port inspector on the East Coast without the disease being recognised? We are told that the English officials are much better trained and have much more technical knowledge than the Irish officials, and yet we are asked to blame the Irish officials because they did not recognise the disease when the cattle were going out. The answer is very simple. It is possible that the disease was not in such a stage of incubation that it was recognisable upon examination at the ports. The same answer may be made on this side, but I do not think it is fair or proper that in a Debate on the administrative action of the Irish Department in relation to this question these wholesale charges should be made. Next, it is suggested that the Irish veterinary surgeons do not know what foot-and-mouth disease is, and that they have not received the training which will enable them to recognise it. The hon. Member (Mr. C. Bathurst) seems to overlook or perhaps not to be aware of the fact that a great number, perhaps the majority, of the veterinary officials in Ireland are gentlemen who have received their technical training in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and the London College. Those of us who take an interest in this question in Ireland are aware that the opportunities and facilities for training veterinary surgeons in Ireland were very limited until recent years, and that the majority of veterinary surgeons in Ireland at present are men who have received their training at Glasgow, London, and Edinburgh.

I should like to explain that although I specifically mentioned the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, it is only fair to say that it was brought to our knowledge in the Departmental Committee that a very large proportion of those acting in Ireland have no diplomas whatever from any college.

I was only dealing with the specific point made by the hon. Gentleman that there were veterinary surgeons in Ireland who did not appear to know, or to be able to recognise, what the symptoms were, and that this was due to the defective training they had received. I wish to point out to Friends on this side of the water that if there is a lack of knowledge, it is not to be laid to the door of the veterinary surgeons we have in Ireland. We have in Ireland as efficient and as well trained a body of veterinary surgeons as you have on this side. The complaint I made was that the cattle escaped the notice of the officials on this side. I think anyone who is interested in this question in Ireland, and who is in touch with the committees of the county councils acting under the Diseases of Animals Act, knows that they act with the greatest care, and that the greatest caution is taken by the officials in seeing that the requirements of the various Statutes are recognised. I am not sure but that if we were to ask the opinion of the farmers and breeders in Ireland with respect to the administration of the Act, they would tell us that the officials are much too severe, and that the operation of the Diseases of Animals Act was too freely and too strenuously enforced. For my own part, I know that we in Ireland are anxious to restore the Irish cattle trade to the position it once occupied in British markets. We are anxious to restore the reputation of Irish farmers. I am glad to say Ireland is regaining its position, but we will only do that by maintaining a good name in regard to Irish stock, and after this Debate, I claim from the Committee an expression of opinion that not alone do the Irish trade come out of it well, but that the Irish Department of Agriculture have done their work well. At the same time I would appeal to the Vice-President of the Department not to allow the President of the English Department to err on the side of caution, if caution is going to injure the Irish trade. Let us take every precaution for England and every precaution for Ireland, but no over-caution, and no panic legislation.

My excuse for intervening in the Debate is that no Scottish Member has yet taken part in it, and that Scotland, in my opinion, is interested in the question as well as England and Ireland. The hon. Member (Mr. Lardner) in his opening remarks said that the Irish stock owners were interested in this question, and that hon. Members from Ireland represented them in this House, and rightly so. I would like to submit to the House, as has been submitted by the hon. Member for the Wilton Division (Mr. C. Bathurst), that there are other interests to be considered in this connection. There are the interests of Scotsmen and Englishmen.

Put Englishmen first.

No, I am sorry to-be unable to concede the hon. Baronet's request, for I look upon Scotsmen as being the more important. There are other interests which the Vice-President of the Board of Agriculture in Ireland must take into account. The hon. Member (Mr. Lardner) urged the right hon. Gentleman not to err on the side of caution, and he proceeded to ask that the restrictions which have been imposed upon the export of Irish cattle should be removed at the earliest possible moment. In my humble judgment it is not a question of removing these restrictions, or of preventing the export of Irish cattle at any particular moment, but it is a question of removing the restrictions if the Vice-President of the Board of Agriculture in Ireland thinks he can safely do so, having regard to those interests in Scotland and England, which would be injured were the restrictions removed at too early a moment. When the hon. Member said he hoped that nothing would be done in this matter which would injure Ireland, I would ask him to take into consideration those interests in this country which would be seriously affected and seriously injured were the restrictions removed at too early a date. The hon. Member for the Wilton Division, to whom the House always listens with great respect, knowing that he speaks with great authority on subjects such as that under discussion to-day, brought an indictment—I use that word because he used it himself—against the Vice-President of the Board of Agriculture in Ireland on various counts, and I understood him to suggest that the Orders which were issued last Monday should have been issued on the previous Saturday.

I did not say that the Order which was issued last Monday and which had the effect of restricting the movement of cattle in those four counties should have been issued before, but that certain measures which were taken to see whether the disease existed in any other parts of Ireland might have been taken three or four days before.

I agree that that is not quite what I was going to say. I would submit to the hon. Member that any action the right hon. Gentleman had taken previous to that which he actually did take would have been taken on mere rumour, and that it was impossible for him to take the action he did take on a date previous to that on which the Order was actually issued. There is one point in the hon. Gentleman's remarks with which I am in entire agreement, and that is that the inspectors, upon whom are laid very responsible duties, should be fully qualified for the work they have to perform. I do trust that the right hon. Gentleman will bear this in mind, and will take the action which is necessary to bring about better qualifications in this respect. The hon. Member opposite (Mr. Lardner) said the fact that the inspectors at Liverpool had failed to trace the disease and had allowed the cattle to pass, in effect exonerated the Government inspectors in Ireland. It is very difficult to say whether or not that is so. It is very difficult to say—investigation, no doubt, will prove—at what particular date the disease actually broke out among the animals to which reference has been made. But I do think that the fact that these cattle passed both sets of inspectors is one calling for further inquiry and investigation. The hon. Member for Wilts asked—and this is part of his indictment against the right hon. Gentleman—what the owner of the farm upon which this outbreak took place had been doing all this time. That is certainly a matter for investigation. The right hon. Gentleman may be able to ascertain what the owner was doing and why no report was made, but it cannot be brought as a charge against the right hon. Gentleman if he does not happen to know what the owner of the cattle was doing on the day on which the outbreak was discovered. I submit to the right hon. Gentleman, and also to the President of the Board of Agriculture, that they should both take into account not only the very large interests in Ireland which are concerned in this matter, but that they should also consider the interests of Scotland and England and not relax these restrictions at a moment which would endanger the interests of people in this country.

It may be well to recall some facts in connection with this outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease on this farm at Swords. On the 21st June a number of cattle were shipped to Liverpool. On the 27th there was a report from Liverpool that these cows were supposed to be affected with foot-and-mouth disease. On the 29th the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture got information about them. He and his staff, on the 30th, visited this farm at Swords, and the staff could not then make up their minds whether it was or was not foot-and-mouth disease which affected the cattle. There was some rumour of what was called a knowledge able man, or, in other words, what is known in Ireland as a cow doctor, and he was brought into Dublin to be consulted by the veterinary surgeons. He described this disease as timber tongue. If there were yew trees on the farm, and those cattle began to lick those yew trees, it would cause the timber tongue, and as every farmer knows, in this season of the year diseases in cattle are very prevalent. For instance, if a heifer or bullock has got dry murrain, as soon as this disease develops if it is not taken in proper time the animal will begin to froth at the mouth, which is an indication of foot-and-mouth disease. I know from experience, and I am not speaking in this matter from hearsay, that the disease will develop in from twelve to fourteen hours in the case of pigs, but in cattle it will take from twelve to forty-eight hours. Here we have cattle shipped on the 21st of the month, and until the 29th no disease was detected among them. Therefore it is a question that has to be considered very seriously whether it can be proved that there was any foot-and-mouth disease among those cattle. But suppose that this disease which was found to have got in among the cattle on the 1st July was foot-and-mouth disease, might it not be possible that the person who purchased those cattle purchased them on the farm, and after disposing of them in England, went back to this farm to look at more with a view to purchasing them, a thing which is customary in Ireland to do? Then there is a question of litter.

Reference has been made to the prohibition of the entry of foreign hay and straw or any other litter into Ireland. Have we heard anything of what becomes of the cattle in foreign countries which suffer so much from this disease? Are they turned into the frozen state and imported into the United Kingdom, and may not the wrapping in which they are contained bring this disease along with it as well as hay or straw? I think that the Vice-President of the Board of Agriculture in Ireland who was blamed for not acting more quickly acted rather too hastily. I think he should have allowed these cattle to remain until the disease developed fully, because there is no difficulty in seeing this disease. The animals begin to, if I may use a vulgar phrase, slobber at the mouth. Between the hair and the hoof a break in the surface takes place all round the hoof; it does not take a microscope to see it; any person can see it for himself. I can remember when even farmers in England would buy cattle which were suffering from this disease, and take them home, take care of them, and bring them round. In this case we have had fifty splendid cattle, worth probably over £20 a head, slaughtered and buried with quicklime put over them, so as to consume them. Only twenty-eight or thirty years ago when the former outbreak took place in Ireland, the graziers were permitted to have those cattle slaughtered, and export them to Great Britain or any other place where they could have consumption for them, and to bury the hides. We, here, may get hides from foreign counties. I heard an hon. Member saying here the other day that it was a loss of about £900,000 a year to this country for cattle not to be allowed to come into Birkenhead.

Cattle are allowed to come into Birkenhead from foreign countries, and if there was not something very strange about this frozen meat, there is not an animal that is sent, even in the frozen state, that would not realise from £6 to £7 per head more at Birkenhead than it does at present. Therefore it must be that they can abstract all the essence from the frozen beef, before they put it into the frost, for the purpose of making Bovril. Then there is the disease of swine fever, which many veterinary surgeons have studied for a long series of years. They have had consultations with the Department in Dublin, when the viscera, or intestines of animals have been sent there for examination; but it has never yet been satisfactorily decided by anyone what swine fever really is. There are fevers in all sicknesses; there is erysipelas, and there is what you call button fever, so described, because of red spots the size of a button; and pigs are as likely to suffer from pneumonia, for they are delicate animals, as from anything else; and I would suggest to the Vice-President—I have myself done it many a time—that he should call in two or three eminent medical men to consult with the veterinary officers in Dublin in order that they may examine closely into the nature of swine fever. In regard to store cattle, if you allow them to be imported into Great Britain at once without placing restrictions upon them great benefit would result, but the moment you impose restrictions you make people suspect that they are not all right. Let the store cattle come in freely and you will do a good thing. It is the time of year for fat cattle, sheep, and pigs to be exported from Ireland, and I would urge the Minister for Agriculture to allow these animals to be exported at once; or let them have a fortnight or three weeks until Ireland is known to be free from disease—as I believe she is at present—and if you are then satisfied that there is no such thing as foot-and-mouth disease in existence in Ireland then store cattle should be allowed to be exported from that country free from any restrictions.

3.0 P.M.

Whatever criticisms may be directed against the Vice-President one cannot accuse him of lack of thoroughness in the steps he has taken. If anything, I think the steps he has taken have been too extreme in the circumstances, considering that the outbreak in Ireland has been localised to one district in one parish, and that there has not been the slightest trace of the disease in any other part of the country. In so far as that one part is concerned, and indeed in so far as the four administrative counties are concerned, the right hon. Gentleman has taken the most effective steps to prevent the spread of the outbreak. I would particularly emphasise the point that whilst this country may be largely dependent upon the fat cattle trade, Ireland is to a great extent dependent on the store cattle trade, and I do not accept the view that the store cattle trade will not be in full swing for some weeks to come.

I was speaking of the store trade in Ulster. It was on that I was talking at the time.

As I understood, the hon. Member for Fermanagh agrees with me that the store cattle trade might be in full swing at this moment. So far as Munster is concerned it is of vital importance that the ports should be opened for the export of store cattle. The small farmer, whose margin of livelihood is so narrow, depends upon store cattle alone for sustenance, payment of rent, and the very necessaries of life. The very fact that this outbreak has occurred will cause him suffering enough as it is—because there will be a fall in prices for some time to come—without his being compelled to hold his cattle for three or four weeks or whatever the period may be when Ireland, in the words of the right hon. Member who spoke from the Front Opposition Bench, may be considered safe again. I put the question to him, What in his opinion would constitute that time? and he said it was for Ministers in charge to reply. I beg to remind the President of the Board of Agriculture (Mr. Runciman), who is interested in this matter, that we freely acknowledge in Ireland that we would regard the period in which the country would be safe again as the period when it was established beyond doubt that the disease had not stirred beyond the area in which it already exists. I understand the right hon. Gentleman has promised to consider his action, and make a statement in this matter on Monday next; but I would beg him to bear in mind that the very life of our cattle industry in Ireland depends upon the free exportation of store cattle. It is a serious matter, and one which calls not for political or party consideration with a view to making capital out of it. Where you have an industry on which so much depends, it cannot be too strongly urged upon the Vice-President that the restrictions upon that industry should be relaxed, bearing in mind that when we make that request we ask for nothing more than is given to England. If you can have freedom from restriction, apart from affected areas, in this country, there is no reason why there should not be the same freedom for trading and exportation in Ireland. It is an established fact that foot-and-mouth disease has not been so frequent or so widespread in Ireland during any period in the last half-century as it has been in this country. The extraordinary theory was put forward by an hon. Member below the Gangway that atmospheric conditions have something to do with the spread of the disease in Ireland, as if Ireland suffered from a peculiarity of atmospheric conditions which does not exist in England. I hope that in dealing with this matter the President of the Board of Agriculture will bear in mind that the very life of agriculture in Ireland depends upon the removal of restrictions upon the exportation of store cattle, and that it should be done at once.

I am fortunate in catching your eye, Sir, at the moment when the President of the Board of Agriculture is on the Treasury Bench, because the point with which I intend to deal concerns him more than it does the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture in Ireland. Yesterday he announced the issue or an order allowing fat cattle to be exported from the ports of Belfast, Cork, Waterford, and Limerick. It was a cause of considerable disappointment to the North-West of Ireland to find that the port of Derry was not included in the list of ports from which fat cattle might be exported. Whatever may be the controversy about store cattle, there is no doubt whatever that at this season of the year a brisk and important trade is going on in fat cattle. Derry is the outlet of a very important and very rich agricultural portion of the North-West of Ireland. A brisk and important trade goes on from that port all the year round with the city of Glasgow and with the Northern ports of England. The city of Derry has an absolutely clean bill of health. Derry and the districts from which the cattle are exported through Derry, is the furthest important port from the danger seat of the disease in the county of Dublin, and considerable disappointment has been felt in that district at the non-inclusion of Derry. I hold in my hand a telegram from the Mayor of Derry, urging me and urging other Members of this House to impress upon the President of the Board of Agriculture the advisability of including Derry in the favoured ports from which fat cattle may be exported to the various English ports. I assume that the order of yesterday was made by the President of the Board of Agricuture after full-consultation with the Vice-President of the Department. It may have been that this port was overlooked. I would urge upon the President to reconsider his decision if he has already considered the case of Derry, and if he has overlooked the case of Derry to take steps at once to include it in the list of privileged ports from which fat cattle may be sent.

Co-Operation Among Farmers

I do not propose to follow in the discussion which has taken place, as I wish to bring forward another subject. It is a very important subject, and I bring it forward now because this is the only opportunity in which I can do so. For very many years I have been strongly convinced of the desirability of introducing as far as possible co-operation into industries, especially with regard to farming. My reason for speaking now is in order to call the attention of the Committee to the action of the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture in Ireland, and to the fact that he has not encouraged, or, rather, has discouraged a Grant being made to the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society from the Development Commissioners' Fund, while Grants have been made to similar societies in England and Wales. Some Members of the Committee may not be quite aware of the scope of the work of the society to which I refer. I would wish them to bear in mind that there is some difference between the functions of the Department of Agriculture and that of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society. One of the principal functions of the Department is, no doubt, to give instruction to farmers and others as to the scientific aspects of their profession and trade, while the chief work of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society is to instruct them as to business methods and generally as to the application of the methods of co-operation. After following for some fifteen years the work of this great society in Ireland, I hold the opinion that there is no finer work of patriotic devotion to Irish interests than that inaugurated by Sir Horace Plunkett. I believe that opinion is held generally both in Ireland and in this country.

No.

Very generally at any rate. The Irish Agricultural Organisation Society was started, I think, about twenty years ago. It is purely educational in character; its function is to teach farmers business methods and the advantages of co-operation. What I want to lay particular stress on is that its work is educational and not commercial. I would like also to call the attention of the Committee to the very important fact that one of the principal rules of the society is that politics and religious differences shall never be discussed in any of their meetings or come in any way in connection with their work. That, the leaders of the movement have been convinced has been carried out, so far as they are concerned, with the greatest rectitude. It is interesting to note something like fifty meetings were held before the first co-operative society in Ireland was established, After a number of years that have passed, there are something like 400 dairy societies apart from other societies. Those societies are financed and managed by the farmers themselves. The turnover of those various societies is something like £2,000,000 per annum and the farmers have £400,000 worth of capital by which those co-operative dairies are managed. In addition to the establishment of co-operative creameries there are something like 200 credit banks by which farmers obtain temporary loans at a low rate of interest. I believe I am right in saying that by some mistake the Vice-President has not seen his way to encourage those agricultural banks. It is well-known to all Members who have studied the subject that the value of those banks to small farmers is enormous. I do trust that the Department will take all means in its power to encourage those banks in future, instead of trying to prevent their further utility. There are many other branches which have been started by this society connected with co-operative work and all tending towards the development of business intelligence. I would say to hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway that that intellectual development now going on in Ireland is the best possible forerunner for Home Rule, as it is teaching the people business habits in a businesslike way, to which, for a long time at any rate, they have not been accustomed. The Irish Agricultural Organisation Society has been started chiefly by voluntary subscriptions, at any rate in recent years. Several thousands of pounds are subscribed by the farmers themselves, and there have been other sums subscribed by friends in other directions. It is contended by the society that the work is of so important a nature that they have the right to call on the Government to give them financial help, so that this educational work in Ireland may be increased in the future. As I have previously stated, Grants have already been made to similar societies in England and in Scotland, and I want the Vice-President kindly to tell me why the financial support accorded to English and Scotch societies should not also be accorded to the Irish society, which is of a similar nature and of very much greater importance. I would like to read one or two extracts to emphasise the position to which I have referred. The book from which I quote is entitled "Agricultural Co-operation in Ireland":—

"Three agricultural organisation societies working in Ireland, England and Scotland, applied simultaneously for Grants in aid of this work. These bodies have aims, objects, and methods of work which are identical. The English and Scottish societies were admittedly promoted to carry on among farmers in England, Scotland and Wales the same work which the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society has been doing in Ireland for so many years. The application of these two bodies was granted. The English society has for some months been in receipt of a Grant, and the Scottish Organisation Society was also successful in its application."

My second quotation is as follows:—

"There does not exist any more democratic organisation in Ireland. The movement is self-propelled. It is truly national, for there is not a single corner in Ireland to which it has not penetrated. It has united Nationalists and Unionists, Sinn Feiner and Orangeman, Catholic and Protestant, in a joint labour for the welfare of Ireland and their industry. These Irishmen have evolved their ideas, methods of work, and organisation, and other nations have not been slow to adopt them. The English and Scottish organisation societies have done Ireland the honour to follow in its footsteps."

There is a great deal of credit due to Ireland in having created such a society as I have described. My last quotation is as follows:—

"The second argument used against the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society is that it interferes with private trade. Now let us be perfectly frank. The creation of creameries and the direct sale of butter by the societies to customers abroad did interfere with the business of butter merchants, who hitherto had this business entirely in their hands. The creation of poultry societies which exported eggs and poultry did interfere with existing methods of collecting and marketing poultry products. The creation of agricultural societies who purchased implements, seeds, and fertilisers directly from wholesals houses or manufacturers did divert some business from the local agents. But these changes were justified by the benefit to the farmer, and the trading community which lost in one direction gained greatly in other ways, because the farmers were much better able to pay their bills than before. Whatever benefits the productive classes and makes them wealthier, stimulates and increases consumption, and benefits the distributive classes. Irish traders, manufacturers and wholesale houses, have found, after seventeen years of experience of agricultural co-operation, that they have. on the whole, greatly benefited by the movement. Money is made to spend and not to keep, and the increased wealth of the farming classes has been put into circulation and has aided in the revival of Irish industry."

I would therefore appeal to Irishmen on all sides of the House, irrespective of party, to support the movement to obtain from the Development Commissioners a substantial Grant to this society. Especially would I appeal to the official representatives of Ireland in this House. What greater work could there be than that of encouraging this educational work in connection with the co-operative movement? In my opinion it is far better that this business movement in Ireland should be carried on and managed voluntarily. If this Grant is made by the Development Commissioners, as I hope it will be, although the society will expect to have their operations supervised, to see that the money is properly spent, I believe that if you allow the movement to be worked entirely by voluntary methods, the effects will be far greater and more beneficial than if it were under State management. I ask the Vice-President to be good enough to give me some assurance that the work of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society will be recognised, as the work of similar societies has been recognised in England and Scotland.

I did not know that there was any intention of raising the question of the Grant to the Agricultural Organisation Society in Ireland, but as it has been raised, I think it is right that some Member of the Irish Nationalist party should give expression to the views of the party upon this matter. The hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Haslam) made a statement which I am obliged to traverse. He said that Grants of public money had been made by the Development Commissioners to similar societies in England and Scotland. I have here the report of the Development Commissioners giving a list of the Grants they have made, and here is what they say in regard to the Grant for agricultural co-operation:—

"The Treasury, on the recommendation of the Development Commissioners, sanctioned an interim advance of £3,000, or such part thereof as might be required in 1911–12, as a Grant to the Board of Agriculture to be held by them in trust for the Agricultural Organisation Society."

Therefore it is not strictly correct to say that the Development Commissioners or the Treasury have made a Grant to the Agricultural Organisation Society of Great Britain. They have made a Grant to the Board of Agriculture to be held in trust for the society, and it was distinctly understood that all such Grants should be made, not to any private society, but to public bodies to be used by them through private societies if they approved of them. What is the great difference between Ireland and Great Britain in this respect? It is that in Great Britain the Board of Agriculture are willing to accept this Grant of £3,000 and to administer it through the operations of the English Agricultural Organisation Society, whereas in Ireland the Development Commissioners have been unable to get any representative body of any sort or kind to agree to be the medium of Grants to the Agricultural Organisation Society. They have tried to get the Department of Agriculture in Ireland and the Congested Districts Board, but both bodies have refused to have anything to do with it. The Department in Ireland is more entitled to speak for the people of the country than the Board of Agriculture in this country, because the Department in Ireland was specially constituted with a semi-representative character, and it is in very close touch with the county councils of the country. This very issue was raised before the last election by the county councils of members of the council of the Department. It was on that issue the last election turned, when an overwhelming majority was re turned by the county councils of Ireland against the allowance of this Grant. That fact alone ought to convey to the hon. Member who raised the question the conviction that there is something radically different in the operations of the Agricultural Organisation Society in Ireland and the operations of the Agricultural Organition Society in this country. One of the things that have surprised me most in considering the various discussions that have taken place in this country on the question of making Grants of public money to the Agricultural Organisation Society in Ire land is that men who have very slight knowledge of the affairs of Ireland venture to dogmatise and lay down the law for us who represent the Irish people in this House, and seem to treat our opinion, and the opinion of the county councils and of all the chief representative bodies in Ireland as of no consequence whatever in the matter. At least I think we are entitled to ask, seeing the extraordinary consensus of opinion in Ireland with regard to this money, that primâ facie there ought to be the assumption on our behalf that there are some grounds of reason for our opinion. Now the hon. Gentleman opposite—I do not say this in any offensive sense—has been briefed by the friends of Sir Horace Plunkett—

Not in the least. They are my own opinions.

The hon. Gentleman used an argument exceedingly familiar to us in Ireland. I do not want to go into this subject at length. I desire to be brief, but he said that it was a fundamental rule—that is familiar to us among the other arguments—of the society, which had been in existence twenty years, that religion and politics were never allowed to be discussed at the society's branches. I have heard that fundamental rule over and over again. Nevertheless I assert here—and I am ready to prove it on another occasion, whenever it is regularly challenged in regular Debate in this House—that it is not a fact. I challenge that statement, and say that for the last fifteen years in Ireland, so far as the governing body of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society is concerned, it has been a Unionist propaganda in Ireland, and a very effective propaganda. The hon. Member opposite will understand, therefore, the hostility some of us of the Irish party, as a body, have to the grant of public money to that propaganda. The hon. Member says that politics are not allowed to be discussed. A very plausible case could be made up in support of that. How is it that politics are not discussed? Politics are banned! The organisers of this movement are instructed, and carry out their instructions, to denounce politicians as selfish, as self-seekers, and politics as the curse of Ireland. There are different ways of banning politics. The great movement in which we have been engaged for the last thirty years is one of those that come under the constant notice of the Organisation Society, whose organisers in their constant propaganda try to insinuate into the minds of the people that everybody who is a politician is a self-seeker, an office-hunter, and an enemy of the people, and that politics are the curse of Ireland.

Hear, hear.

Those may be the views of the hon. Baronet. I do not quarrel with the views that hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway hold, but would they ask a Home Rule Government to subsidise them from the public purse for disseminating those views amongst our people in Ireland?

There is a circular that I have here sent out to all these branch societies, asking them whether politics ever entered into their discussions. Between 200 and 300 replies were received to the circular, and everyone of them denied the assertion that politics were discussed.

Has the hon. Member ever heard of the Rolleston letter written to a friend and supporter of the Irish party in St. Louis, in which it was stated to be the intention of Sir Horace Plunkett, with the aid of the society, to destroy the Irish party and the Home Rule movement?

I have read that that was said by Mr. Rolleston, but was not said in connection with the society at all, and had nothing whatever to do with it. Anybody could make a statement of that sort, but it is not necessarily true.

Mr. Rolleston has been for years an official of the society, and he wrote this letter at the request of Sir Horace Plunkett to a friend, and did not know that it would be published. He wrote it under the impression that he was sending it to a Unionist enemy of ours in America instead of to a friend. This friend sent it back for publication, and the publication of it unveiled the whole policy of this organisation. In this letter it was pointed out that under the pretext of leading people by way of common sense and business ideas Sir Horace was going to destroy the Irish movement. Let there be no mistake about the origin of this campaign, which has been carried on for the last twenty years, for the purpose of diverting the minds of the Irish people from politics. Politics are banished from the society! Of course the idea is to tell the Irish people that politics are folly and a waste of time and to put into their minds, systematically, as far as they can be got to listen to these organisers, that all Nationalist politicians are self-seekers, office seekers, and worthy of no confidence at all, and we are expected to co-operate in subsidising this treacherous campaign against us.

Three-quarters, or even more, of the members of the society are Nationalists, that being, I believe, the reason, so far as I can see, for desiring that politics and religion should not be discussed; and in order that the whole of the countryside should meet together for the development of their industry.

That has no bearing whatever on the question. Members of the Unionist party are far more anxious than are we in this matter. We are self-seekers, we are selfish politicians who have been ruining Ireland. These are the men who are championing the Irish Organisation Society, who want us innocent Irish Nationalists to believe that it is a perfectly neutral body. Who was it that first enlisted this warm, this enthusiastic interest on the Unionist Benches in favour of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society? Irish Unionists drove Sir Horace Plunkett out of public life. It was not we in Ireland who drove him out of public life, although he was our enemy. It was the Unionists of Dublin, and that was before they understood the true inwardness of his policy. As soon as they came to understand it—Irish Unionists being rather slow of comprehension—over comes the hon. and learned Member for York, and in an unguarded moment made a speech in Dublin which opened the eyes of many people. In that speech he took Sir Horace Plunkett under his protection, and declared he was the saviour of Ireland.

I never took Sir Horace Plunkett under my wing. Sir Horace is far too great a man, far too unselfish a man, and too much devoted to the interests of Ireland to require any man's protection.

It was the friends of hon. Gentlemen above the Gangway here who drove Sir Horace out of public life. You wanted him to sit in a Liberal Government and he a Unionist. That was the most extraordinary claim I know. Of all the claims I ever heard made in this House I never heard the equal to it, that a man being a Unionist should sit in a Home Rule Government and draw a salary from that Home Rule Government. I do say this for Sir Horace Plunkett, and I have said it before in this House: I consider him to be one of the greatest statesmen of the age. I do not think he is a good business man, even if he is a great man, because every business transaction he has ever put his hand to has failed. But he is a born statesman—a Unionist statesman.

Hear, hear.

Pitt was a bad business man, but he was heavily in debt. Many great Statesmen have been very bad business men. Now let me give one or two quotations in support of what I have said. I give this credit to Sir Horace Plunkett, that he has the greatest press clan of any man I have ever known in this world. A fortnight ago in every newspaper in London, and in all the magazines, there appeared suddenly, like an outbreak of German measles, a series of articles praising Sir Horace Plunkett and exploiting his propaganda. I recognised that they were all written or inspired from his office in Dublin. His friends are certainly not much troubled with modesty, because in the "Saturday Review," Sir Horace Plunkett is compared with the divine founder of the Christian religion, and his whole life and story, and system, is held up as something not far in its perfection from the sermon on the Mount. Then comes a further eulogium. In the "Spectator" of the same week, the 8th June, we find in the list of contents the phrase:—

"The real solution of the Irish question."

And when you turn to "the real solution of the Irish question" as contrasted to Home Rule, you find the "Spectator" sets forth the system of Sir Horace Plunkett and the organisation society. Here is one sentence of the article which will give hon. Members some idea of the spirit of this organisation and its governors. Here is what they state:—

"The great illusion that the Irishman is a political animal is being exploded. The noble truth has been proclaimed at last that he is a human being."

I wonder whether we are political animals or human beings. That is the spirit of this Irish organisation society. Politics are banished, we are held up political animals, and the great discovery is now made by the organisation society that the Irish peasant is after all a human being. That is a very wonderful discovery. Let me turn to another example, and here I recognise the noble hand of one of the prophets of the movement in Ireland. It is in an article in the "World's Work":—

"Lately the whole solemn farce at Westminster has been a dream to those who are carefully concerned with the social and economic conditions. What use is there for Home Rule or Welsh Disestablishment if the nation is to be paralysed by discontented labourers, led in turn by wild fanatics with impossible theories? Who cares a fig one way or the other except possibly those office-seekers under the coming Irish Government, or poor Welsh parsons who love their church but hate to see its power for good, and for perhaps for politics destroyed? There is nothing wrong in Ireland to-day which constitutional changes serve to put right, nothing except the aching vanity of a handful of professional politicians."

[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Hon. Members on the Unionist side approve of that; I quite expect that from them. I do not quarrel with it at all; they are our open enemies, but are we to be asked to subsidise gentlemen who write these articles?

Are these articles written by persons directly connected with the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society?

The articles are anonymous, but I recognise the style. They are written to order, all of them, and this particular one if I am not greatly mistaken is written by one of the chief prophets and organisers of the movement. It goes on—

"There is only this that Ireland needs, the elimination of a preying class, and the Government are adding to this political class. And our Government"—

this is very interesting—

"in 1912 set out to heal an economic illness by sending a Punch and Judy Show to Dublin."

That is the Irish Parliament.

Hear, hear.

That cheer is very natural from Gentlemen above the Gangway, but this is an organisation which is non-political and which we are to ask the Government to subsidise.

How does the hon. Member know this came from the organisation society?

I know it by the spirit and the style, and it agrees entirely with the account we get of the language used by their organisers in the country—

We should like to know very much where Sir Horace Plunkett stands at the present moment. He is a very singular man. At one time he postures before the Irish people as a non-politician. About twenty years ago he suddenly emerged in Ireland as a strong Unionist, and captured one of our most important seats. He came to the House of Commons as a non-politician, and in 1893 he made one of the very bitterest and most effective speeches delivered against the Home Rule Bill—a wicked speech as I have never forgotten. Still he was a "non-politician." He then took and held office under the Unionist Government as long as he could, and, when the Unionist Government were defeated, he made terms with the Liberals and expressed his willingness as a non-politician to take office and a salary from the Liberals. He wanted to draw his salary without committing himself to one side or the other. That is a cleverness which I do not understand. He proposed to go on drawing his salary, and we were denounced for claiming at the hands of the Government, as we were entitled to claim, that any man who was not a friend of the Home Rule policy should not be one of the Members of the Government. That is what has been called driving him out of office. I do not think he ought to have waited to have been driven out. I never knew any man could act in such a way as Sir Horace Punkett did on that occasion. I should like to know where Sir Horace Plunkett stands now. I know people to whom he declares himself to be a Home Ruler. I believe that when he goes into the company of Unionists he declares that he is a strong Unionist. We have heard of the saying of St. Paul that he wanted to be "all things to all men," and Sir Horace Plunkett appears to be anxious to be all things to all men. I do not think anybody can tell upon which side he is, because he is ready to take any side. I am anxious to know where Sir Horace Plunkett stands.

He is a "Russellite."

I never said of the present Member for North Tyrone that he was all things to all men. If he is he gets very poor reward from these benches. Those are the grounds on which I object to this Grant going to the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, and I say that the case in England is not analagous, and will only be analagous when you can get the Irish Agricultural Department to take charge of this money. It is monstrous to ask the Treasury to overrule the entire body of those who represent Irish opinion on this matter and make this Grant in spite of the fact that they can get no representation on that body. When this Grant was withdrawn, what did Sir Horace Plunkett say? It has been said that the whole thing has been run by private subscriptions, but that is not so, because Sir Horace Plunkett has already received £27,000 of public money since the foundation of this association. When the Grant was withdrawn Sir Horace Plunkett said, in 1907:—

"Taking the movement as a whole, even now the profits earned by the movement were ample to raise all the money they wanted for organisation purposes many times over, and if a new spirit were infused into the movement he was in hopes that the profits would be much greater."

In March, 1908, Sir Horace Plunkett said:—

"He disagreed with the reasons given for that withdrawal, but he did not in the least object to it. He thought it was better for the movement to be thrown on their own resources, and if the movement was sound there ought to be ample funds to pay their own expenses."

After that statement one would suppose that Sir Horce Plunkett would be ashamed to ask for a Grant of public money. Out of his own mouth he is estopped, and ought to be prevented from asking for this Grant. There is one other ground on which I strongly object to this Grant, and that is that Sir Horace Plunkett's movement, managed as it has been in Ireland, has created, and was intended to create, a feeling of friction and animosity between the country districts and the towns in Ireland. I have always held that there is no necessary opposition or distinction between the interests of the country and the town in Ireland, or in any other country, and I think it is a very bad policy to create ill-feeling and friction between the country towns and the country districts in Ireland. Sir Horace Plunkett has done that, and he has done a great deal of mischief in that way, and it is owing largely to that feeling which he has created for deliberate political purposes that this opposition has grown up against this movement. Sir Horace Plunkett said at a meeting of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, in December, 1909:—

"The business mind of the country must be organised to counteract the business mind of the town, and the political forces of the farmers must be organised against the political forces of the town."

Although we are told Sir Horace Plunkett is not a politician, here we find him laying down that the political forces of the farmers must be organised against the political forces of the town. If there was no other ground to be found there is sufficient ground in that sentence alone for opposing this Grant. This is a fatal political propaganda to us in Ireland, and we cannot afford and we will not tolerate any organisation which undertakes to organise the farmers in Ireland against the towns or the towns against the farmers. For the success of our movement a united country is essential, and yet a gentleman like Sir Horace Plunkett, who is a chameleon in politics, seeks to come into our ranks to organise the farmers against the towns and the towns against the farmers in order to split up the political forces in Ireland. Anyone who advocates that is the most insidious and deadly enemy we can have against us, and so long as I am in this House, and as long as the Irish party have any influence, I can say with confidence, speaking on behalf of the party, that we shall oppose this Grant.

I have nothing to complain of in regard to what has been said by hon. Members in this Debate, and I am very glad to have an opportunity of explaining the action of my Department. I will first take what the hon. Member for Cork City (Mr. W. O'Brien) said. I think his argument can be disposed of in a very few sentences. The hon. Member for Cork did not enter into the question of what the Department has done generally, but he confined his observations to the question of the ports in England being closed against Irish cattle. He asked that I should take steps, in conjunction with the Minister for Agriculture in this country, to have those ports opened as speedily as possible. I want to say that I am as anxious as anyone can be to have those ports opened and to allow the Irish cattle trade to go on as before. This is one of our great industries, and it has been in an extremely prosperous position. This has been a great year, and this outbreak is a very sad occurrence, which bears very hardly upon Ireland. What I have got to say on that point is that I have agreed to meet my right hon. Friend on Monday morning to confer with him and when I am in a position to convince my right hon. Friend that Ireland is free from this disease, and that we have succeeded in stamping it out, and that there is not a vestige of it remaining, I shall hope to make out a good case for the consideration of the question which has been submitted to me by the hon. Member opposite.

I would like to remind the hon. Gentleman that this is the most insidious of diseases It is a most mysterious disease. While we have been talking about it here I have received telegrams on the subject, and, I regret to say, that there has been another case at Swords, on one of the affected farms, and it has been dealt with promptly. There are also rumours that further south than Swords there is a suspicious case, and investigation is being made. Where there are only suspicions I do not desire to name the district, which would only increase the anxiety that prevails all over Ireland in thin matter. I want, however, to impress upon Irish Members that I only name the district where the disease has been proved, but where it is only a matter of suspicion I would rather not name the district. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman opposite will agree with me.

indicated dissent.

Very well, the right hon. Gentleman would like to know the district. There is a suspicion of one case at Limerick. It is only a suspicion, and the case is being investigated. This may help to show the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cork City that it is a, very rash thing to say we have got done with this disease in Ireland. Whilst I shall do everything in my power—I ask my hon. Friend to believe that—to get these ports opened as speedily as possible, I will not ask my right hon. Friend to open the ports of England to Irish cattle until I am quite clear that Ireland is free from the disease, and that it can be done without danger.

I never for a moment suggested Ireland was free from all danger from this disease. What I stated was that outbreaks in Ireland should be treated exactly in the same way as in England.

4.0 P.M.

At all events, I have said what I have to say on this point; and I have dealt with it first because I could give a plain answer to it. I am as anxious as my hon. Friend to have the English ports open to Irish cattle, but my right hon. Friend will not consent, and I say he ought not to consent, until I am able to assure him the danger is passed. The first speaker in the Debate was the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Peel). He wished further light upon the telegram from the Board of Agriculture upon Thursday night after the office was closed, and every officer had gone home. We were not waiting at the Department for an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. He even desired to see the telegram. He would not take the epitome of the telegram I gave the other day. I have sent the telegram over to him, and it exactly bears out what I said on Wednesday last. I am on my trial here, and the Department is on its trial, and I ask the hon. Gentleman to put himself in my place on Thursday night at 7 o'clock, having to deal, not with an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which could be got at and dealt with, but with a telegram from Sir Thomas Elliott at the Board of Agriculture, stating that foot-and-mouth disease had been discovered at Liverpool that day, and that it was suspected the cattle in question had come either from Scotland or from Ireland, probably the latter. What could I have done on Thursday night? There was no locality indicated in the telegram. The Board of Agriculture simply asked that I should send an inspector to confer with their inspectors at Liverpool, not with a view of diagnosing the disease because we had accepted their diagnosis, but with a view of conferring with the Board of Agriculture in Liverpool and endeavouring to trace the origin of the disease. That was the position in which I was on Thursday night. Is there any hon. Member who will say I could have done anything else than simply comply with the request that I should send an inspector over. I had no proof, none whatever. The hon. Gentle man said, "What did you do on Friday?" I said on Wednesday what I did on Friday. I said to my officers, "If it is true this comes from Ireland, we may be in for a very serious thing." My chief inspector was through the outbreak of 1884, and he remembers it all. I said, "We are perhaps in for the biggest outbreak we have ever had, please cancel the leave of every veterinary officer who is away, and recall him at once." I, at all events, got the staff in Dublin that night or the next morning. We waited the result of the inquiries at Liverpool, and especially the result of the inquiries of our own inspectors sent over. On Saturday forenoon the effective telegram which enabled us to act arrived. It named the man who had sold these cattle in Liverpool. I ask hon. Gentlemen to be fair. This is not a party question at all. Foot-and-mouth disease will make no difference between Catholics and Protestants or Unionists and Nationalists, and I ask hon. Members to be fair to the Department. We got that effective telegram on Saturday. It was in my hands at noon. Mr. Malone was searched for throughout Dublin, and he was in the office at 2. He brought his principal with him. These are respectable cattle salesmen in Dublin, who did not conceal an atom of information they could give. I got the whole of the information I described to the House. The moment we got the information affecting those who had bought the cattle in Liverpool, I said, to the secretary: "The first thing to do is to telegraph to Liverpool the names of those who bought these cattle, so as to get on the track of the animals that have been sold." I then sent officers to the farms from which Mr. Malone had bought them. We discovered ten, as I said the other day. Our officers were sent out that night and on Sunday afternoon I had reports from the whole of the ten places scattered over four or five counties. Is it for that I ought to be buried in the trench at Swords along with the diseased cattle, as the hon. Member says?

I wonder how much better he would have acted; I wonder what else he would have done. I say I did everything that could be done by any human being. I recognise the tremendous calamity it might be and the responsibility that rested upon the Department, and we got all the information, as I have said, on Saturday night. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO, Sunday."] We got all the information we could on Saturday. Sunday intervened, and we were handicapped again by the telegraphic communication being cut off, and by the Sunday train service. We came to the office at nine o'clock on Sunday morning; we left it at one o'clock on Monday. We had then discovered the whole seat of the mischief at Swords; we had got a clean bill of health for the other districts. We concentrated on Swords and stamped out the disease in twenty-four hours or thereabouts. I do not think that anybody has a right to say that the Department failed in its duty. I do not think any one has a right to say that on Thursday, when I had no information, I should have acted; nobody has a right to say that on Friday when I had no information I should have acted. I do not think any one can reasonably say that. I assert that the moment the information became effective, these cases were tracked down in Liverpool, and by Monday we had the whole thing under control. Let me refer to what I call a rather serious point. It has not been said straightly in this House. A question was put on the Notice Paper, and withdrawn, as to whether the Department had any knowledge of the disease existing, or whether any officer of the Department had any such knowledge. I had not an opportunity of answering that question, because it was dropped. But it was clearly an innuendo. But let me say to the hon. Gentleman who put the question on the Paper and dropped it, that he seems to have had information from some source or other that disease had actually existed in Ireland for days and even weeks.

Who put the question and withdrew it? I notice the right hon. Gentleman is looking at me. I know nothing about it.

The hon. Member said he had information that there was disease in Ireland. [HON. MEMBERS: "Who "] The hon. Member for Wiltshire.

It was not I who put the question on the Paper and withdrew it. The right hon. Gentleman implies? that I withdrew the question.

There was a question put down, and it was withdrawn and another question put to the Chief Secretary.

I never put a question down and withdrew it.

A question was put down by the hon. Member and was not asked?

Because it was not reached.

The hon. Member put another question down.

I have never withdrawn a question put to the right hon. Gentleman or anybody else.

To-day the hon. Gentleman said there were rumours in Ireland and in England, and that he had information from a responsible gentleman. If that responsible gentleman conveyed that information to the hon. Member, would it not have been vastly better and more useful if he had passed it on to the Department in Ireland?

A communication was made to the Board of Agriculture in England. My sole suggestion was that such information was given to the Board of Agriculture in England and, if so, it should have been conveyed forthwith to the Department in Ireland.

The hon. Member knows what business is. The Department of Agriculture in Ireland is responsible for this matter, and if there had been a rumour, as he suggested, it should have been conveyed straight away to the Irish Board. The hon. Member attacked the owner of the farm for having concealed the outbreak of the disease.

The information was conveyed to the Minister in this country.

It was not conveyed either to me or to my Department. The hon. Member asked me to-day if I was going to prosecute the owners of this farm because they had concealed the outbreak. If a prosetion lies they will be prosecuted, but what am I to say of this business Gentleman who comes and makes an innuendo against the Board of Agriculture here and against the Department in Ireland, and yet who, having this information, never conveyed it to the authority?

The right hon. Gentleman must be fair. No information was given to me whatever, either in this House or elsewhere, until after the Board of Agriculture in this country had for four days had the information and had treated it as important, as they themselves stated in the telegram to the right hon. Gentleman.

Neither the Board of Agriculture nor anybody else conveyed any information whatever to the Irish Department that disease was suspected to exist in Ireland. There are one or two other points I want to clear up. I was asked a question by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Chaplin) yesterday about hay and straw. I should like to read a Minute I have received from our chief inspector today upon that point. It will get rid of a lot of suspicions that have been getting about. People have been asking me how this disease originated. The hon. and learned Member for North-East Cork raised the question of the hay and straw Order yesterday. Let me read this Minute which I have received since I came into the House.

"All these animals"—

this refers to those on the Russell Cruise farm—

"were at grass of which there is an ample supply. Neither hay. straw, nor cake was resorted to for feeding purposes. According to our latest information, most of the animals were bred on the premises, the only exception being Maguire's, and it appears from his statement that the last of these were purchased in February of the present year. No addition to the farm animals has taken place since last February."

That disposes of the hay and straw question, and the starting of the disease from that quarter We have still to track down the origin of this outbreak of the disease.

Do we understand that these animals never went in at night and never had anything to do with bedding?

Never.

It does not say so.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon said it was an extraordinary thing—he did not deny the possibility—that these cattle could have been ill in that neighbourhood without somebody knowing it. People say there is a veterinary surgeon and a rural local authority there. That may be. I am certain that the Department and nobody connected with it had ever a suspicion of this disease existing at Swords or anywhere else in Ireland, and I am also certain that if the rural local authority had had any idea of it they would have at once informed me. Someone suggested today that the gentleman whom I called a "knowledgeable man" must have known the disease. That brings me to this point: I do not believe the knowledgeable man knew that it was foot-and-mouth disease. He treated it as timber tongue, as he told me himself. That was his definition. The hon. Member for the Wilton Division asks, am I quite sure that the veterinary officers of the Department are quite competent for this business? Let me be perfectly frank. It is nearly thirty years since there was a case of foot-and-mouth disease in Ireland. It is very creditable to Ireland that we should have had immunity from the disease when other parts of the country have not been immune. I do not deny that, a generation having grown up since then, it may be that many young veterinary surgeons in Ireland have never seen an actual case of foot-and-mouth disease, but they have had an opportunity of studying their profession and even of studying the disease elsewhere, and it cannot be allowed to be said without protest that there are veterinary officers in the Irish Department who are not capable of grappling with any disease to which animals are liable. We have a superintendent at the port of Dublin who is as good as any officer who can be found in any part of the United Kingdom. Where cattle are to be tested in this way we have not sent young men but experienced men. I shall welcome any inquiry, and shall cooperate most cordially.

Let me now come to the question of inspection, because I believe at this point the whole difficulty arises. I spoke in this House on Wednesday. I left my office hurriedly, and I had no opportunity of bringing papers with me. I spoke on Wednesday from my own personal knowledge of what had taken place in my own recollection, and I ask hon. Gentlemen to remember that my office is not across the road: it is 300 miles away, and some allowance should be made for some slight difference in the statement. I made then from what I make here on fuller information. Let me tell the House now what actually happened. There were thirty-four head of cattle bought by Malone in the Dublin Market on Thursday, and there were twenty-eight bought by Malone brought from the country straight to the ship. That was sixty-two. These were the figures I gave on Wednesday. It is a curious thing; that the three head of cattle which are incriminated were not in these sixty-two at all. They were part of a lot of nineteen bought by Malone from five individuals, and they were shipped not to Liverpool, but to Holyhead, went straight to Oldham, and slaughtered within two days. This will bear out what I said earlier as showing how mysterious and insidious the disease is. They went on the earlier ship sailing from the North Wall. They were inspected not by one officer, but by two. They were passed as sound. Mr. Beattie and Mr. Malone are good judges of cattle, and I asked them if they observed anything. They said they were the healthiest animals—the sixty-two and the nineteen—they had ever shipped. They passed at all events the veterinary inspection at the North Wall, and they were put on board. They were brought to Liverpool. When they got to Liverpool, what was done? They were taken to Mr. Malone's field in Liverpool. They arrived on Sunday morning at four o'clock, they were put in the field, and they were brought to market on Monday morning. Even at that date, two days after they left Ireland, the inspecting authority of the market at Liverpool also passed them as being sound. Not a word was said about them. I hope the House will not suppose that I am attempting to throw any responsibility on Liverpool or to take any responsibility off Dublin. If the disease ought to have been detected at Dublin, the officers there were responsible for not detecting it. I do not wish to shirk any responsibility as regards the Irish officers. Then the question of the period of incubation comes in. Just let me put this to the House. There were a considerable number—twenty-four I think of the Russell Cruise herd—reported as suffering from disease, and these were at once slaughtered. None of the other animals gave the slightest symptom of disease, and if any of them had been taken to the ship they would infallibly have been passed. I mention that just to show how difficult it is for a House, constituted as this is, to deal with a matter so intricate. Then we have this state of affairs: We have the origin of the disease traced to Swords. Some of my hon. Friends differ from me in that. My staff think that is the seat of the disease. It is quite impossible to trace it to Cumberland, where there was an outbreak of the disease. As to the shipments of these cattle—

Do you mean the twenty-eight and not the nineteen?

The twenty-eight were brought direct from the country. In addition there were nineteen which went with the sixty-two by the earlier boat. There was another cargo on board that same boat that came from Bally-haunis, in the West of Ireland. My defence of the inspectors, as far as I can make a defence, is that when all these animals were shipped the disease had not developed; that the incubation—the minimum period of which is two days—was going on in the animals, but that the disease had not developed, and could not be detected, and therefore they were allowed on board, and that the same thing is. true about the inspectors at Liverpool; but that the animals in which it was incubating communicated the disease to other cattle that were on board I have not the slightest doubt. I see no other way of accounting for this disease. I have given a perfectly fair and straight answer to the questions that have been asked, and in any investigation that takes place the Department will be very glad to give all information possible.

I am not an authority on foot-and-mouth disease, but I happen to know all about the question raised by the hon. Member for Monmouth Boroughs (Mr. Haslam). When I went to the Department in 1907 I found that the Department of which Sir Horace Plunkett was Vice-President had been paying to an organisation, of which he was president, £3,700 a year, and that it had handed over in eight years the large sum of £29,000 to that organisation. Long before I went to the Department this was a cause of trouble in the country, at the Agricultural Board and in the Council. Long before I went to the Department this was a burning question, and debates had taken place at the Board and at the Council. Hon. Members below the Gangway were arrayed against it. When I came to the Department I well remember the Leader of the Opposition asking me what policy I proposed to adopt. I said that I proposed to inquire, and when I made my inquiries I would put the case before the Council of Agriculture when it met. Here is what I found. I found a strong feeling in the country—I got evidence of it—that this Society was being used to attack the organisation of which hon. Members below the Gangway belong. I satisfied myself that that was true. I found again that practically all the traders of the country were arrayed in opposition against it.

They came to me in deputations, and asked what right had the Government to subsidise a private society to compete with them in their business. What happened was this. Co-operative Agricultural Societies created by the other Society, were compelled by the rules to take shares in the Irish Wholesale Society, and urged to do their trading with them. That is the rule to-day. I did come to the conclusion that the Government had no right to give State money to compete with traders and to assist a society such as the Irish Wholesale Society. Let me say that at that time I was in a minority. Sir Horace Plunkett had appointed the nominated members, and I told the Council of Agriculture I could not agree to continue the Grant, but inasmuch as great trouble might be caused by immediate withdrawal, I said I should allow the Grant to last for three years on a descending scale until it was abolished altogether. The Council, upon which there were at least three members of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, accepted that decision and concurred in it, as did the Agricultural Board, and the grant would have gone on for three years and expired in due time. I had no hostility to the Society, and I proposed that arrangement. What happened? I caught a sentence of my hon. Friend as I came into the House.

What sentence?

I would suggest that hon. Members should not interrupt, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Strand (Mr. Long) requires time to reply before five o'clock, and there is much delay by these interruptions.

At the meeting of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, Sir Horace Plunkett declared that even if he had remained in the Department he could not have continued the Grant. Six weeks after that the Rolleston letter was published. The Rolleston letter was to Mr. Devoy, I think, a friend of his, Announcing that the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society was about to be reconstituted, and he said he thought the time had arrived when this organisation should dish Dillon and the Parliamentarians. The gentleman who got that letter, instead of sending a subscription of £100 as was expected, sent the letter to the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Waterford (Mr. John Redmond). I knew nothing about it. I was astounded, on opening the newspapers, to find a letter of the hon. and learned Gentleman, publishing the Rolleston letter, and wanting to know what the Department said—was this the sort of thing for which the subsidy was granted. I summoned a special meeting of the Agricultural Board. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland knows the character of the men who compose that Board; they are as good a body as any country ever had. The Board unanimously, after considering that letter, came to the determination that the relationship between the Department and the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society should cease at once. They said the people had got into their heads that we were encouraging a political society; that they could not have the Department's work hindered in many parts of the country, and that the Grant must be struck off from the 31st December next. It was struck off.

That is the history up to that point. When the Land Act of 1909 of the Chief Secretary was passed, the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society applied for a Grant to the Congested Districts Board, and were refused. Let my hon. Friend not suppose that I refused to give that Grant. I am happy to say I was not present at the meeting when it was refused. The Development Commission was created, and the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society made an application to them for a Grant of £6,000 per year. That application was sent on to the Department under Statute, and I reported against it. Why? I felt that I could not report in favour of a Grant by a Government authority when I had been compelled to withdraw a Grant a Government authority had given. I re ported against it, and this has gone on for twelve or eighteen months. The Development Commissioners have arrived at the conclusion that a Grant should be made, and they have recommended a Grant. [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."] May I ask the Noble Lord if I am responsible—

I did not interrupt.

I beg pardon. They have made this recommendation, and it will be for the Treasury to decide. After the Department had refused to support the Grant, they asked me to nominate four members to sit upon the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society to help to administer it. I tell the Committee frankly I declined. I have had enough experience of trying to work on the committee of that body. We had representatives on that body, and they had to be withdrawn. The Commissioners now state that the Department declining, they will not ask the Congested Districts Board, but will ask the Treasury to allow the Development Commissioners to nominate eleven members on their own account. What does it all come to? It comes to this, that every responsible agricultural authority in Ireland has said "no," and we are now going to have a system of English government in Ireland, which we have never had before; and I think it will be the very worst we have ever had—that is to say, a body of eleven gentlemen nominated by the Development Commissioners—of whom only one is an Irishman, and he is against establishment of a Grant—and those eleven are to administer agricultural co-operation in Ireland. That is my position in the matter of this Grant. The Grant has been recommended by the Development Commissioners against the advice of the State Department of Agriculture in Ireland. Second, the Agricultural Board, a statutory body set up by this House, two-thirds of which is elected by the county councils, have decided against it. The Council of Agriculture, another statutory body, including two members from each county council, elected by the county council, have decided against it. The County Committees of Agriculture in each county, so far as they have spoken, have decided against it. The traders of the country, North, South, East, and West, are up in arms against it. The Irish Parliamentary party are against it. This House set up the Council and Board to advise the Vice-President in his work. That is their statutory duty. They have advised me against this. I ask my hon. Friend, How could I sanction this Grant against the advice of the Agricultural Board and the Agricultural Council, statutory bodies, which this House set up to advise me in all matters connected with agriculture? I could not do it. I would be unworthy of holding my office if I did. I have stood resolutely against it. If it is carried over my head and these eleven gentlemen are set up to administer affairs against the Agricultural Department, the responsibility is not mine; it will belong to somebody else. I hope I have made myself clear. It is a most extraordinary thing that the Treasury have been asked to do. First you set up an agricultural authority in Ireland, which has done much to lift Ireland out of the despondent despair in which she was for many years. You yourselves have often envied the Irish Department of Agriculture and what it has been able to do. You have set up your State Department, and what do you propose to do now? You propose now to set up a second endowed authority, a hostile authority, to work against it. Let me give an example of what is going on. I have introduced a Dairying Industry Bill in the House of Lords. What has been the opposing authority? This Society that you propose to endow. You give money to a State Department to help forward agriculture. That Department moves in a direction which everybody admits is wanted, and then the second endowed authority—not yet endowed, but it will be if they have their way—because they are not going to be allowed to do what they have been allowed to do, comes in with State money to hinder the work that the State Department of Agriculture is doing. Neither in regard to this matter nor in regard to foot-and-mouth disease has any case been made out against my Department to-day. We shall take care that all our actions in regard to foot-and-mouth disease are such as to commend themselves not only to this House, but to the country.

The right hon. Gentleman, in making his reply, has naturally defended himself with some warmth, but no with more warmth than was to be expected, because he undoubtedly found himself in a very unpleasant position—a position in which nobody representing the Agricultural Board in this. House has found himself in my experience—that is, face to face with a sudden and, on the face of it, unaccountable outbreak of this most serious disease. I have only a few minutes left, but I do not make any complaint of that, because the right hon. Gentleman had to meet a double charge. I regret that the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Haslam) found it necessary to bring in this other question, which had nothing on earth to do with the subject-matter of our Debate; because it has reduced the time at our disposal, and left us in a very unsatisfactory position. I desire at once to make an appeal to the Chief Secretary. This subject was introduced by a supporter of his own, who was followed by the hon. Member for East Mayo (Mr. Dillon), who made a very bitter attack on Sir Horace Plunkett, an attack which, I believe, to be absolutely unjustified. There ought certainly to be an opportunity given to those who know the whole circumstances of the case, which I do not, to reply on behalf of Sir Horace Plunkett, who is not here, and cannot speak for himself. After what has happened I think it is nothing short of the duty of the Chief Secretary or the Government to give another opportunity on which this particular branch of the subject may be dealt with, as it ought to be, in full. I know nothing of the merits of the case or of the controversy itself; but so far as Sir Horace Plunkett's share in this business is concerned I am prepared to say that from the beginning to the end of his career as Minister responsible for the Department of Agriculture he gave, not only all his energies and abilities—and they are great—but his whole devotion to the work of that Department and to the promotion of the best interests of Ireland. It is a poor reward to hear in the House those who profess to have the same interests of Ireland at heart as Sir Horace, mention the name and accompany it by the criticisms which has been addressed from some quarters. What is still more deplorable is that the right hon. Gentleman has for the first time, so far as I know, departed from the invariable and honourable practice of Ministers to defend their predecessors, even though they might not altogether agree with their views. I do not remember a case where a bitter personal attack has been made upon his predecessor in office where the successor has not felt it to be his bounden duty to stand up and defend the absent man.

What Chief Secretary did you ever defend?

The hon. Gentleman the Member for Bucks opened the Debate, and was followed by my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton. The hon. Gentleman made an extraordinary charge against my hon. Friend, such as I may only refer to in a sentence. He tried to prove that my hon. Friend had led a party attack and made a party speech. That was a most baseless charge, and did not find any supporter in any of the speakers that followed. The right hon. Gentleman himself, who is the subject of attack, took a wiser course, and met the attack to the best of his ability, not taking refuge behind the foolish suggestion that we are animated by any party spirit or object in what we are doing. My hon. Friend's speech was apparently justified. Why The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon, who spoke earlier, and myself, have probably had more experience than anybody else in connection with this very difficult and responsible work of keeping disease out of this country. I say, frankly, that with all the experience we have got, we are for the first time face to face with a situation of extraordinary difficulty. That situation brings this fact to the front: that primâ facie even after we have heard the right hon. Gentleman—and most certainly before he had made his defence—there must have been—the speech of the right hon. Gentleman confirms that view—either gross carelessness or lamentable ignorance.

On the part of the Department?

Wait a moment; let me make my case in my own way. There must have been either gross carelessness or lamentable ignorance. Why must that have been so? We are aware of the fact—let the right hon. Gentleman remember—by admission, undenied in any quarter, that in the first place the news came from England to Ireland of the outbreak in Ireland. Primâ facie that involves a very serious charge against the Department in Ireland. Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman in his defence tells us—he makes it perfectly clear—that when the animals to which he referred were shipped at Liverpool it is an undoubted fact that the disease was raging at Swords, Dublin. We have had some technical descriptions of this terrible disease to-day, and reference has been made by the right hon. Gentleman—I will not say whether his views are well founded—that no blame attaches to the inspector because the disease was incubated, and gave no sign to the inspector to detect it. But we know from experience of this disease that the period of incubation tends rather to a shorter than a longer period. We know now there were these cases at Swords, county Dublin; that we knew before the right hon. Gentleman's defence, and I say primâ facie my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham, before he heard the Vice-President, was right in saying that it rested with the Department to prove that there had not been carelessness or some lamentable display of ignorance on the part of those responsible. I have said before, and I now repeat it, I am one of those who, although I view what has happened with the most profound regret, I am not surprised. I have said more than once on public platforms, and I repeat it here, that during the last five or six years, and it applies to both Agricultural Departments, here and in Ireland, these two Departments in the State ought above all others, and certainly next to the Admiralty and the War Office, to be non-political Departments, and used to be. In the old days we did not concern ourselves in these Departments with party politics or with vote-catching politics. We gave the whole of our time and attention to the primary business of our Departments. During recent years there has been far too great a tendency to turn these Departments into political Departments rather than Departments for dealing with the great work with which they are faced, namely, protecting the health and the people of this country. I say, as one who has been at the head of more than one Department, that there is not a great deal that the Parliamentary head of a Department, particularly one like that of the Board of Agriculture, can do to initiate policy, but he can do a very great deal in enthusing his Department with the right spirit, and if it is known in the Department that the one thing uppermost in his mind is the condition and the health of the country, you may depend upon it there will be displayed that spirit of vigour and energy which used to exist and which are necessary if this work is to be efficiently done.

The right hon. Gentleman has appealed to us not to be too hard upon. him. He has reminded Us of the curious and extraordinary character and nature of this disease and he has dwelt, and naturally dwelt, upon the terrible consequences that may follow an outbreak spread widely throughout the country. But does not all this show that it is of vital importance to us as a country that the Department charged with this work should make it its primary work and not, as unhappily has been the case in recent years, make politics its primary work? For my part, I recognise, and gladly and thankfully recognise, that the right hon. Gentleman who has taken over the English Department has made a most excellent change, and I hope the same change will be made in the Irish Department, and that we shall recognise by the energy displayed that the prevention of disease or the elimination of it when it breaks out is the first work that they will endeavour to perform. From what I have heard I think, with one exception, as the right hon. Gentleman got the news of what happened, the steps taken seem to me altogether admirable. I think nothing more could have been done, with one exception, since the outbreak. The right hon. Gentleman told us he was going to see the President of the Board of Agriculture on Monday, and the right hon. Gentleman said if he was able to persuade him that Ireland was free certain consequences might follow. He went on to say that we immediately went down, with the result that we stamped out the disease. But only five minutes before that the right hon. Gentleman told us that he had just received a telegraphic communication as to outbreaks in other districts. I think it is dangerous to use such words as "stamped out" when you have only just got rid of a number of cases by slaughtering the cattle, before you have satisfied yourselves that the disease is actually stamped out.

I did not say that.

The right hon. Gentleman said he was going to see the President of the Board of Agriculture on Monday—

What I said was that I had arranged to confer with the President of the Board of Agriculture on Monday. I told the hon. Member opposite that unless I were able to present to the right hon. Gentleman a clean bill of health I could not ask him to remove the restrictions as requested by the hon. Member.

I am only too delighted to hear what the right hon. Gentleman did say. My object is not to find fault with him in this matter, because there are plenty of other things upon which I should be delighted to find fault. I do, however, wish to make certain that the Vice-President will not be influenced by any pressure of any kind brought to bear upon him, but will do his best to maintain to the utmost every possible regulation. If you err at all you should err on the side of extra security and protection. It is because I thought the right hon. Gentleman had indicated some idea of finding it possible to declare Ireland free, from now, that I say this. There is one other thing which I think the right hon. Gentleman ought to have done. When he first got the news of the outbreak in Liverpool he said that he could do nothing that night. I disagree with him there, because it was his duty there and then to have telegraphed to all the police centres in Ireland and to every inspector in Ireland telling them of the news he had received, and that they must make every inquiry they can on the spot. Had he done that some very valuable hours would not have been wasted, and some risks might have been avoided. I do not know whether there is any intention to divide on this Motion in connection with the attack which has been made upon Sir Horace Plunkett. [An HON. MEMBER: "Yes."] At any rate, I shall not take part in any Division which appears to charge the right hon. Gentleman with having made mistakes before the disease broke out, and certainly he has not made any mistakes since.

Question put, "That Sub-head A (Salary of the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture) be reduced by £100."

The Committee divided: Ayes, 177; Noes, 256.

Original Question again proposed.

And, it being Five of the clock, and objection being taken to further Progress, the Chairman left the Chair to make his report to the House.

Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next, 8th July.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture a question of which I have given him private notice, namely, whether he is in a position to state how Scotland stands in relation to the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease?

At the same time may I ask the right hon. Gentleman if the port of Londonderry will be included in the Order made permitting the export of fat stock from Belfast, Waterford, Cork, and Wexford to Glasgow, Birkenhead, and Bristol, this port being furthest from the seat of the outbreak, and having a clean bill of health?

I have arranged that Londonderry should be added to the Order, It appears to be the port most distant from the seat of the outbreak. So far as Scotland is concerned, I am glad to say there is a clean bill of health. There are two cases reported in Hampshire; one at Kingsclere has been proved to be not foot-and-mouth disease, another at Banghurst is now being investigated, and I can give the House no definite information upon it. The cases in Lincolnshire have all proved to be false alarms. In view of the fact that no suspected cases of foot-and-mouth disease have been reported from the Derby and Nottingham districts, where risk of infection had been run by the exposure at the markets of those two towns of animals which had been brought from Stanley market on the 24th ult., I now propose to modify the restrictions in those districts so as to allow of the holding during the coming week of markets for fat animals for slaughter. If no further developments occur I propose to withdraw the restrictions. I hope that it may also be possible to issue the Order modifying the restrictions in the southern portion of the Penrith district to-day, though I cannot entirely remove them.

Can the right hon. Gentleman say when he was notified of the outbreak on the border of Hampshire?

We heard of it first this morning. Investigation is now going on. I will send some communication to the Press in regard to it.

Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether he traces all these English outbreaks to Irish sources or whether any of them may be deemed to have originated in England

So far as we know, all the animals have come from Ireland. I should not like to give a definite opinion in regard to that because it is difficult to trace every animal. That is our present information.

I desire to detain the House for a few moments with reference to the statement made last night by the hon. Member for West Belfast (Mr. Devlin) on the Adjournment of the House. The House will remember the hon. Member made two very serious charges against Mr. Clark, who used to be a Member of this House. One of those charges was that he organised the expulsion of certain members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians from his works in Belfast. I was able to dispose of that, and prove conclusively to the House that he had nothing whatever to do with it. The hon. Member made another charge against my friend Mr. Clark, namely, that he was responsible for a certain statement which appeared in the "Evening News" last night. I told the House I had seen Mr. Clark at five o'clock, and that it was highly improbable that some member of the staff of the "Evening News" had had an interview with him after that time and before the hon. Member spoke at eleven o'clock. Although I felt certain that the statement-made by the hon. Member that Mr. Clark was responsible for this interview in the "Evening News" could not be the case, I was not in a position to say definitely that he was not. The House will remember that the hon. Member actually stated that Mr. Clark had stated that he was the author of the statement. I took it from the hon. Member that Mr. Clark's name appeared as the author of the statement in the paper. I got a copy of the "Evening News" this morning, and I found, as I expected, Mr. Clark's name is not mentioned at all, and there is nothing in the statement to show in the slightest degree that Mr. Clark is the author of the statement. Further than that, I have seen Mr. Clark since then, and have learned, as I knew perfectly well I should, that he knew nothing whatever about this statement, and that he was not the author of it. I have troubled the House because the hon. Member is abusing his powers as a Member of this House to make two grossly inaccurate statements with regard to a highly influential and respected member of the community as Mr. Clark. The statement made by the hon. Member that he had organised the expulsion of these men from his works, is a statement which the hon. Member would never dream of making outside this House, for the simple reason that he knows he would find himself in a Court of Law on a charge of libel in a very short time. The other misstatement in the interview is almost as serious. I do not think I need apologise for detaining the House, because it is a gross abuse of the position of any hon. Member to issue statements such as those the hon. Member issued last night without a shred of foundation, and which he would not make outside the sacred walls of this House.

The hon. Gentleman ought to have read the full report of the proceedings which took place last night. I quoted a statement made in the "Evening News," and the following passage appeared:— Wolff? Harland and Wolff's workers have had nothing whatever to do with these in famous outrages perpetrated against inoffensive Catholic workers on the island, and inoffensive Protestant public men at their private residences. I accept the statement with regard to Mr. Clark, but I want to saddle the responsibility upon the right shoulders. I do not blame the working men of Belfast, however intensely I may feel the unparalleled attacks which have been made upon Catholic workers in Queen's Island.

I know that if these men are left alone they are good and sincere and honest men. I come into closer contact with them, even the Protestant and the Orange workings men, than any of the hon. Gentlemen on these benches. I am the only one in this House who speaks for them—I mean in all that concerns their lives and conditions. Of course in all those things which concern not politics but the party game you have used them as pawns, and retribution will come some day. The real culprits in connection with this transaction are the men who are in the House on those benches. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition made this declaration on 16th April of this year:—

With regard to the school children we deny the facts, and we challenge inquiry—a complete inquiry. We challenge the Chief Secretary for Ireland to give us that. There were no assaults on children, and none on women. A crowd of Hibernians resented an attack made upon them by a band of Orangemen. I regret it. I wish the Hibernians were as patient in Ireland as I am in this House. Let me pass from the Leader of the party, whose idea of revolution is not to go over and lead the revolutionists, but to thump the dispatch box in this House. Is that your idea of civil war? Why do the warriors not proceed to battle? Why do you not go and attack the Catholic workmen yourselves? [An HON. MEMBER: "What has that to do with it?"] It has everything to do with the situation. Let me pass from the Leader who thumps the table to one of the Members for Armagh, who stated the other day in this House—one of the anarchists from Ulster:—

Where will you be?

We will not be in the House of Commons, but we will be there, and I think that the Irish people, whether they are in Ulster or in Munster, have not shown inferior courage when the necessity for the manifestation of that courage has arisen.

When this subject was under discussion in the House of Commons last night the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken made a statement closely affecting the public conduct of one of the most respected citizens of Belfast. What the hon. Gentleman said was a serious charge which no hon. Member should make without having full material before him to justify it. The charge was that he had instigated outrages which, in the statement of the hon. Member were abominable outrages. We know now that was an invention. We know that it was supported by no evidence, and we know that when the hon. Gentleman was pointedly challenged by one of my hon. Friends who declared that the gentleman who had been attacked was in Switzerland, and had been in Switzerland for a fortnight before, the hon. Gentleman, instead of withdrawing the attack, which he knew was unfounded, got up in the House and said he adhered to that attack and to every word of it. To-day, when challenged, and when there is no hole for escape open to him, what did he say? He said: "I had a report that the thing was true." That is the way in which the champion of conciliation under the new Home Rule Bill withdraws from a scandalous charge which no Gentleman should ever have made and for which any Gentleman, if it was pointed out to him that he was wrong would at once have withdrawn. On Motions for Adjournment in the House of Commons we have had four discussions during the last week, and on the first of those occasions we discussed very briefly charges made by Unionist Members that women and children had been brutally assaulted by members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, of which the hon. Gentleman is president. Last night we discussed charges made by the other side which, if true, are equally abominable, if it be the fact that unprovoked assaults had been committed by Unionist workmen upon Catholic workmen. I pronounce no opinion, because the facts are not before us as to whether the charge is true or false, but I do submit to the judgment of the Whole House: Is this the atmosphere which has been created by the very introduction of your Home Rule Bill, the atmosphere to which you look for the promise of that conciliation which is to heal the wrongs and obliterate the injustice of centuries?

And, it being after Half-past Five of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 3.

Adjourned at Twenty-nine minutes before Six o'clock, until Monday next, 8th July.