386 THE JOCKEY CLUB 1835- 



how to obtain the right of running on French race- 

 courses ; and since then the present Duke of Hamilton 

 has taught the Jockey Club a similar lesson. 



As a red rag to a bull, so is Mr. Anderson's 

 Metropolitan Eacecourse Bill of 1879 to a member of 

 the Jockey Club, who will deride it as a ' posthumous 

 act,' inasmuch as the club, ' with a view to the aboli- 

 tion ' of such public nuisances as Kingsbury, Bromley, 

 and hoc genus omne, had already before 1879, and, 

 indeed, in the new rules of 1876-77, made such a sum 

 of ' added money ' per diem obligatory that the afore- 

 said meetings had ' been smothered out of existence ' 

 before the said Bill ' came into operation.' But these 

 nuisances had been in existence for years and years 

 (amidst outcry and lamentation) before the Jockey 

 Club adopted the very roundabout course of which it 

 boasts ; and that course had certainly not ' smothered 

 out of existence ' Bromley by 1881, or Kingsbury by 

 1879 ; and it is problematical whether the entire 

 smothering would have been effected by this time, 

 had it not been for the fear inspired by an Act of 

 Parliament. The Jockey Club might long before have 

 put down the nuisances by the strong measure of de- 

 nouncing the conduct of those meetings, and resolving 

 that horses which had run there should be disqualified 

 from running anywhere under Jockey Club rules. It 

 is this dilatoriness, this hesitation to strike home, 

 this habit of pleading ' Please, sir, we were just 

 a-going to begin,' or ' we had as good as done it, 



