MR. FIELDI beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade whether the Government received an invitation from the Royal Hungarian Minister of Agriculture to send representatives to the International Agricultural Congress, 1546 which was held at Budapest last autumn; and whether he can state the reason for the absence of Governmental Departmental Officials from, and the want of co-operation in, that important Conference with other nations?
MR. LONGThe Government were invited to send official representatives to the International Agricultural Congress held in Budapest last autumn, but in view of the nature and scope of the questions to be discussed, and of the difficulty of defining the position of such representatives, we did not feel our-selves able to accept the invitation. In arriving at this conclusion we had before us the fact that the Royal Agricultural Society, the Central Chamber of Agriculture, and the National Federation of Meat Traders had arranged to be represented at the Congress, and that, therefore, the interests of British agriculture would be efficiently kept in view.