300 



sound and good, should not be openly avowed. 

 The only reason why they are studiously concealed, 

 is that ignorant buyers overrate their importance ; 

 but if it were customary with respectable dealers to 

 declare them, it would soon be felt that they were 

 not considered of sufficient consequence to affect 

 the price of a horse purchased bona fide for labour, 

 and not for the market. 



Let a dealer enter a dozen horses at the Horse 

 and Carriage Registry, specially excepting such 

 faults as are not prejudicial to their capacity for 

 work, and judge whether horses thus specially 

 warranted are not sold with as much or more facility 

 than others. As the dealer's address will remain 

 unknown, except to a bona fide purchaser who is 

 indifferent as to the excepted fault, the credit of 

 his stables can suffer no wrong by this bold ex- 

 periment. 



It might also be an express condition of every 

 warranty that the opinion of a veterinary surgeon, 

 to be named before the purchase, should be conclu- 

 sive between the parties, and the return of the horse 

 should be a necessary consequence of his being 

 thus certified to be incapable of the work for which 

 he was sold. 



I shall now endeavour, in reference to the war- 

 ranty of soundness, to explain its meaning, by 

 quoting the cases which establish any particular 



