BRITISH SPORT PAST AND PRESENT 



at an age when his descendant of our own day is retiring from 

 active life. The practice of racing two-year-olds (I quote again 

 from Sir Walter Gilbey) was introduced about the end of the 

 eighteenth century, ' bringing with it the inevitable process 

 of forcing the growth of young stock.' Staying power and 

 ability to carry weight were the distinguishing character- 

 istics of these old-time race-horses, not speed as we understand 

 it. Could Eclipse and Ormonde be recalled to life together, 

 Eclipse would hardly be able to keep Ormonde in sight. 



The behaviour of the race-going crowd in old times left 

 much to desire. We can draw our own conclusions from a 

 passage in the Act of 1740 (13 Geo. ii., c. 19) already referred 

 to. The object of this statute was not only to make an end 

 of racing worthless horses at small local meetings by pre- 

 scribing the weights to be carried ^ and the value of stakes ; 

 it declared another purpose with a candour incompatible with 

 a low franchise qualification ; seeking ' to remove all tempta- 

 tion from the lower class of people who constantly attend 

 these races to the great loss of time and hindrance of labour, 

 and whose behaviour still calls for stricter regulation to curb 

 their licentiousness and correct their manners.' 



The manners of the crowd in George ii.'s time must indeed 

 have stood in urgent need of correction if those of the crowd 

 sixty years later exhibited any improvement. Small local 

 meetings in Kent may have been attended by a mob more 

 disorderly than that which patronised others ; but if this 

 description of the behaviour of the mob at two meetings on the 

 south-west coast is representative, we have to congratulate 

 ourselves on a very vast improvement. Thus the famous 

 painter, George Morland, then a young man of one or two and 

 twenty, wrote to his friend, Philip Dawe, in the autumn of 

 1785 :— 



' You must know I have commenced a new business of 

 jockey to the races ; I was sent for to Mount Pleasant [East of 



' The clauses which related to weights were repealed five years later by 18 Geo. ii., 

 c. 34. 



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