§ MR. CHAPLINasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If his attention has been called to a case of horse poisoning at Ruskington, in Lincolnshire, which was tried before the magistrates at Sleaford on the 10th of January, when it was shown that two horses, the property of Mr. Grist, of Ruskington, had been poisoned with arsenic by George Olive, the person in charge of them, and that one of them had in consequence died; whether he is aware that it was stated in evidence that arsenic sufficient to poison fifty horses had been sold by Mr. Smith, chemist, at Sleaford, to George Olive, and that it was entered in the chemist's book "to be given to horses;" and, whether the Government will take steps to check the indiscriminate sale of poison by chemists for the purpose of being given to horses?
§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTSir, with regard to this matter, I find that a person guilty of horse poisoning has been punished under the recent Act. As to the chemist who sold the arsenic, he might be punished, because the purchaser was under age. That, of course, would not entirely answer the Question, because the purchaser might be of full age, and the true remedy is in the amendment of the Arsenic Act, 1861, and if my hon. Friend would introduce a Bill for the purpose I should be happy to assist him.