THE ORLOFF TROTTER. 405 



These quotations are sufficiently extended to afford an unmis- 

 takable comparison, and on their face evidence that cannot be 

 doubted for one moment that they both purport to be copied 

 from the same act of the Jersey Colonial legislature. In the 

 official printed copy which is before me as I write, the mandate 

 is against "all horse racing, pacing or trotting of horses for 

 lucre or gain." In Mr. Euren's "cutting" the mandate is 

 against "all Norfolk pacing or trotting of horses for lucre or 

 gain," etc. The substitution of the word "Norfolk" instead of 

 "horse racing," is in the nature of a forgery, and I cannot be- 

 lieve that Mr. Euren would be guilty of any such execrable 

 piece of trickery. It must have been conceived and written by 

 some horse sharp who was trying to sell a Hackney to an Ameri- 

 can with a pocket full of money, and after he had effected his sale 

 he could mutter quietly, when at a safe distance from his victim, 

 the couplet from "Hudibras:" 



"The paltry story is untrue 

 And forged to cheat such gulls as you." 



Unfortunately, however, for Mr. Euren, he indorsed the 

 trick, and not only indorsed it, but sent it to the Commissioner 

 of Agriculture with the hope and possible expectation that it 

 would receive public recognition and become part of the horse 

 history of this country. Did he not know that somebody would 

 be nosing round among the old laws and expose the dirty decep- 

 tion? But, on the basis that Mr. Euren was deceived by this 

 wretched interpolation of a fraud into the law, could he not see 

 that the date of the law 1748 was before old Shales or Useful 

 Cub was foaled, and long before the very first "Norfolk trotter" 

 was ever heard of either in Norfolk or in any other part of Eng- 

 land? 



The exposure of this foolish attempt, wherever it originated, to 

 incorporate into an old New Jersey statute a fiction, or a forgery, 

 as it may be called, carries with it a punishment that should be 

 felt by the most unscrupulous of horse sharps; but when we find 

 it unequivocally indorsed and given to the world as true by 

 the compiler of the Hackney Stud Book, it destroys all confi- 

 dence in the accuracy and reliability of that work. This is a 

 misfortune that the friends of the Hackney in England as well as 

 in this country must feel as a blow at the value of the whole 

 interest. Opinions may change with new light, and opposing 



