16 THE JOCKEY CLUB 1750- 



poses, without any lofty views, and perhaps with but 

 small regard for the public advantage, the earliest 

 members of the Club, beyond all other men, before or 

 since, promoted the improvement of the thoroughbred 

 and the prosperity of the Turf, good cause will have 

 been discovered why the institution which they founded 

 should be considered the sole legitimate depositary of 

 the extraordinary powers gradually acquired by it. 

 Whether, under the altered conditions of things in 

 general, some modification (differing somewhat from 

 that which was proposed many years ago by the late 

 Sir Joseph Hawley, and only the other day by the 

 present Earl of Durham) might not be introduced 

 with advantage into the Club's procedure (not into 

 its constitution), so that, while the prestige and 

 supreme authority of the Club should remain intact, 

 the voices of other persons deeply interested in the 

 affairs of the Turf and of horse-breeding might be 

 heard, and a portion of the Club's authority delegated 

 for special purposes to a sort of Lower House, or 

 House of Intermediaries, is a question which will 

 some day no doubt have to be decided, but need not 

 be considered here. 



As for the process of election to the Club, it has 

 varied very little for about a hundred years, whatever 

 it may have been at first ; candidates to be proposed 

 by members (number not specified at first, but in 

 course of time declared at two) and to be elected by 

 ballot, nine members forming a quorum and two 



