Ill 



formerly, is still preferred to the English, and I think with justice-. 

 From Ireland alone, we import any saddle Horses, as many perhaps as' 

 lifteeen hundred in a year; upwards,- in some years. 



The exportation of Horses has been, more particularly Avithin the 

 last forty years, a considerable branch of commerce, and an article of 

 account in our agricultural produce. The chief markets have been 

 Russia, France, Austria, the United States of America, the West-India 

 Islands, and our settlements in India. The sorts usually exported, arc 

 bred and three-part bred stallions, some mares, and shewy nags for the 

 saddle. With the unlimited allowance to export, the number of our 

 Horses have had an astonishing increase, that any idea of a want of'' 

 Horses in this country, excepting indeed of good ones, has-been long 

 out of memory ; and extensive as our breed already is, we have ample 

 and spare room to increase it in a degree commensurate with a far' 

 more extensive exportation, and yet retain an abundant home supply. 

 Adam Smith has arisen to enlighten our darkness, and I trust, to pre- 

 vent our ever being again so far benighted, as to dream that restraints' 

 on exportation were the proper media of promoting plenty of Horses. 

 A very respectable niunber of dreamers, however, yet exists. I am 

 still somewhat in the dark on this subject. No impediment to getting' 

 any number of Horses out of the kingdom, has ever come to my know- 

 ledge; yet some few years since, I was informed by a gentleman in 

 the Customs, that they could not legally go out of the port of London, 

 but that the export was carried on by sufferance, and against law, from 

 the other ports. Has then the act of Charles II. permitting the export 

 of Horses, at a duty of live shillings, been repealed ? I humbly con- 

 ceive it would ha\'e been far more beneficial to the country, and pro- 

 motive of plenty in the article, to have repealed the duty only, and to 

 suffer people, unmolested, to send their own Horses to the best market 

 they' can find, whether art home or abroad. That admirable lesson, 

 laisser nous f aire, has been a long time in learning : there seems to be 

 something so sweet in meddling, even when we do mischief 



Every useful variety of the Horse has been long bred in this coun- 

 try, from the black Horse, the giant of his kind, to the dwarf or poney. 

 The characteristics of the English Horse are strength and speed ; in 

 ' • their 



