TRUSTING TO TRAINEK&. 101 



error, avarice, and in difference when under the care 

 of their trainers, who are or ought to be persons of 

 enlightened minds, what may we often expect to be 

 the fate of horses unwatched by their owners' eye, 

 and left to the sole management of illiterate persons, 

 whose only recommendation is practice in the more 

 executive part of their business, without mind or 

 perhaps disposition to combine circumstances, and 

 are furthermore open to such temptations to do wrong 

 as it is hardly in human nature to withstand ? It 

 may be said that many persons who keep race-horses 

 do not themselves understand either the treatment 

 or the proper placing of them : if so, let them get 

 some one who does, or give up racing altogether. 

 Others may not have time or inclination to attend to 

 their horses : then let them find some one who has, 

 or let them also give up racing. Trusting to trainers 

 to think for employers' interest would be leaning not 

 only on a reed, but a very doubtful one indeed. If 

 they do not act against an employer's interest, situated 

 as they are, they deserve great credit. "We have hardly 

 a right to ask them to think for us ; but suppose the 

 owner does not know how to think for himself, then 

 let him get some one who does, or he had better 

 give up racing, for somebody must think. If the 

 trainer thinks enough to get his horse ready to go, he 

 has done all he ought to be asked to do ; the owner 

 or some one for him, should decide where the horse 

 should go ; for leave it to the trainer, and a horse 

 will not go very often. It is very well to bottle up 

 such a horse as Eclipse as we do Champagne, only to 

 be brought out on extraordinary occasions ; but 

 moderate horses, like moderate liquors, must be kept 

 on draught for every-day purposes to be useful. In- 



ii 3 



