FOR PEACE AND WAR. 67 



their relative ages and performances, and by a distribution, 

 by an authority styled a handicapper, of different weights 

 according to the assumed ability to race of each intending 

 competitor ; giving the %vor8t as well as the best a chance of 

 winning. It is supererogatory to add, that, in view of such 

 an innovation many " weeds " and " wastrels " were fostered 

 and preserved from their speed for long or short distances 

 under light weights, that would have no chance in the old 

 style of racing, as above described. This then was " the 

 beginning of the end." For one fine-grown, sound, weight- 

 carrying and long-running race-horse to be found to-day, an 

 abominably great number of unsound, " weedy," half-milers, 

 or four-furlong shadows can be polled. The fact is, our 

 needs in any great popular undertaking beget our required 

 instruments. Handicapping required bad horses to sustain 

 its purpose, and that we have them now is sufficiently illus- 

 trated by the very table of entries for the handicap races of 

 this Spring (1874). The five great handicap races of the 

 Spring and early Summer are the The Great Northamp- 

 tonshire Stakes, the Newmarket Handicap, the City and 

 Suburban, the Metropolitan, and the Chester Cup. For 

 these important events, over sufficiently long courses to test 

 the staying powers of any race horse, there is a suggestive 

 deficiency in the numerical entries Avhen compared with a 

 short distance handicap at Lincoln — one mile — of an earlier 

 date for decision than any of them. That got one hundred 

 and fifty-nine entries, while the Chester Cup — a race of great 

 popularity with the public — has got no more than eighty 

 intending competitors for its two miles and two furlongs 

 essay. And we may draw more food for contemplation from 

 the recorded facts that we never have, in our day, the same 

 strong entries for long distance handicaps that we have for 

 short ones ; avowedly from the great scarcity of race- 

 horses capable of successfully covering a long distance 



