358 THE JOCKEY CLUB 



Turf, would be to grant it a charter of incorporation 

 and supremacy. An incorporated body of that kind, 

 entrusted by the Government with legislative autho- 

 rity in matters appertaining to owners, trainers, 

 breeders, and their numerous adherents and various 

 interests, could not remain, it is obvious, a private, 

 social Club, as it is now, when it certainly is not and 

 does not profess to be representative of any but a 

 single class. Besides, it is quite impossible that a 

 Government, so keenly alive as ours is supposed to be 

 to the evils arising from the existence of the Eing, 

 the ' Society for the Propagation of Gambling ' (and its 

 dreadful consequences), could commit by express en- 

 actment the charge of the Turf and all its appur- 

 tenances to a Club which, from its infancy, has 

 suffered from the curse of betting, and in these latter 

 days has hailed the Eing as a blessed medium for 

 indulging the more easily in what the law refuses 

 to recognise as legitimate, and the Government re- 

 gards as vicious. Such a Government, so acting, 

 would stultify itself egregiously. Let the Jockey 

 Club make a compact to assist the Government by 

 not only declining to provide an enclosure for the 

 Eing, but by * warning off * the members of it from 

 Newmarket Heath and from all other race-courses 

 under Jockey Club rules, by abolishing the Subscrip- 

 tion Eooms at Newmarket, and bypassing a rule that 

 no member of the Jockey Club shall bet with any 

 member of the Eing, either personally or by com- 



