FOR PEACE AND WAR. 39 



objectionable or tarnished source can we with any show of 

 reason expect ought but a stream partaking more or less of 

 the parental or primary influence ? Temporarily by some 

 casual counteracting cause it may be rendered delusively 

 pure ; but the foreign ascendancy is not always potent 

 enough to be dominant over the main evil. So is it with 

 attempts to counteract the effects of disease or malformation 

 transmitted by an objectionable stallion ; for a generation 

 or two you may succeed, but, subsequently the latent 

 defects become, as in the source from which they sprung, a 

 prominent deformity. 



We found in the establishment of Royal Plates in the 

 past, when the operations of turfites required a stimulant 

 not afforded them by the opportunities and excitements of 

 our own gambling era, a vastly improved supply of horses of 

 substance and stamina. The money given for these royal 

 plates, with a view to encourage the propagation of blood 

 horses of a superior type, when race-horses were not 

 numerous, and the prizes awaiting their successful efforts 

 moderate, was all fair and legitimate ; but the sums ex- 

 pended for Queen's Plates at the present time could be, 

 in my individual opinion, vastly better employed towards 

 producing an identical object ; and this, too, without 

 interfering with the " national pastime " or its votaries to any 

 appreciable extent. There is sufficient inducement to the 

 disciples of the turf to continue to breed the best they can, 

 irrespective of Her Majesty's Plates, which in no in- 

 stance are now the means of creating those contests which 

 they were inaugurated to engender, and in former times 

 produced. And really any reigning Master of the Horse 

 might have been reasonably expected, in common justice, to 

 have given some careful consideration to this subject, so 

 loud does it call for consideration ; allowing that the duties 

 of many in high places are deemed too onerous or too prose to 



