FOR PEACE AND WAR. 141 



CHAPTER Xni. 



The Centre of Gravity Restored — Disorganization Prevented. 



It is palpable that all those evils would have been avoided if, in 

 fii'st subjugating the horse to his uses, man had either taken 

 means to adapt the burthen to the figure of the animal, so as not 

 to disturb the natural centre of gravity, in which case the horse 

 would have preserved his balance without any alteration in extent 

 of his action ; or else before imposing the burthen, had trained the 

 animal to a foreign and extended action, such as would compensate 

 in the harmony of motion to the unnatural distribution of the 

 weight to be carried; in which latter case the natural balance 

 would be exchanged for an artificial one, but the animal machine 

 would by factitious aid still move in equilibrium, and so escape the 

 consequence of being thrown on other resourses for motion than on 

 those which nature has provided. 



It is equally obvious, now, that in seeking to restore the animal 

 to a proper use of his powers, and to preserve him from innumer- 

 able ills that attend on the perversion of those purposes of nature 

 •which he has been made the victim and example of; it is open to the 

 breaker either to exert his skill to bring the animal back to the 

 natural balance of the wild horse, and then to impose his 

 burthen in such a way as not to disturb that balance, or else to 

 extend the natural action sufficiently to prepare him for the 

 reception of a burthen imposed in the ordinary way. 



That the former one would be the course more strictly congenial 

 to the natural economy, I do not doubt, and that in not adopt- 

 ing it we expose ourselves to some bad consequences, I am 



