THE TURF 145 



roguery within the last three or four years 

 than formerly; and we know that the ex- 

 posure of it in these pages has not been 

 without its effect ; yet we regret to be 

 obliged to say, that the snake, though 

 scotched, is not yet killed. That the Don- 

 caster St. Leger race of 1834 was a robbery, 

 there is not to be found a man in all his 

 Majesty 's dominions, unconnected with the 

 fraud, to deny. But by what means the 

 best horse that England has seen since the 

 days of Eclipse a horse allowed to have 

 been (as Plenipotentiary was allowed to 

 have been), a better horse than Priam was 

 was made the worst horse in that race, 

 so bad, indeed, as to have been beaten 

 before he got a quarter of the distance he 

 had to run will perhaps never be known, 

 except to those who made him so. Mr. 

 Batson, his owner, like ^Emilius Scaurus, 

 the consul, stood on his character, and made 

 no defence ; but, as a St. Leger horse is the 

 property of the public, we think the public 

 had a right to some kind of explanation 

 under Mr. Batson's hand. He might have 

 followed the example of the late Colonel 

 King, in the Bessy Bedlam robbery at 'the 

 K 



