854 THE JOCKEY CLUB 



the best horse of a season less likely, and might 

 result in the production of a better class of horses 

 than has ever yet been seen, even in the country that 

 produced Flying Childers, Eclipse, Blacklock, Touch- 

 stone, Bay Middleton, Newminster, Stockwell, Galopin, 

 Barcaldine, St. Simon, and Ormonde. 



We have seen that, as regards the fitness of the 

 Club to be the Moses of the Turf, its composition in 

 many nay, in most respects leaves nothing to be 

 desired. True, it has never done much for the public 

 (though some of its members, individually, are not 

 open to that reproach) until in 1875 it accomplished 

 the construction of a Grand Stand, and cynics do 

 say that even then the public might have waited 

 another century or so, had not a more than usually 

 acute member perceived how great a pecuniary ad- 

 vantage the Club might derive from the innovation. 

 However that may be, it is proverbially ungracious to 

 look a gift horse in the mouth. 



Some thirty years ago, and even less, it was the 

 fashion to sneer at the small amount of * added money ' 

 which the Club from the very first had doled out for 

 the encouragement of racing, even at Newmarket (to 

 say nothing of the other race-meetings which were 

 under its fostering care, but received from it no pecu- 

 niary nutriment whatever) ; but we have seen that it 

 had heavy expenses of its own, whilst it was engaged in 

 establishing its proprietorship of lands and tenements, 

 or rather tenements first and lands afterwards, on and 



