124 The Book of the Horse. 



aristocratic Prussia and Austria have always been accustomed to rely on Government aid 

 for the encouragement of everything connected with agriculture, public works, and a host of 

 other institutions which Englishmen will not allow a Government to touch. I have often 

 found it difficult to explain to a foreigner the meaning of " The Royal Agricultural Society 

 of England," to which the Government gives no assistance, and over which it exercises no 

 control. France has no resident landed gentry, in our sense of the term — that is to say, men 

 of wealth and position who perform gratuitously a number of official duties which are filled 

 on the Continent by paid functionaries, and who take the lead, and are followed by their 

 neighbours, whether it be in founding an agricultural society or building an hospital, im- 

 proving the breed of cattle, or getting up a horse show. In France, whether Royal, 

 Imperial, or Republican, you might travel a whole day and not find one person above the 

 rank of a peasant farmer not in pay of the Government, and certainly not one who dare take 

 the initiative in a public enterprise without the sanction of the Prefect, or Sub-Prefect, the 

 Maire, and the Commissaire de Police; and if a French gentleman, bitten by English ideas, 

 did attempt to take the lead in a local improvement of any kind by forming an association, 

 he would certainly be looked upon as an impertinent person by the officials, and with great 

 suspicion by all the little farmers round him. 



In fact, if the French Government had not taken up the business of offering prizes for 

 mares and foals, and providing stallions, there was no other authority which had the power or 

 the means. 



In Prussia the same reasons existed. The Prussian landed gentry were poor, very poor, 

 until improved means of communication by roads, railroads, and steamboats gave value to 

 agricultural produce, and justified the cultivation of great crops by expensive means. When 

 old Blucher astounded the Duke of Wellington by proposing to shoot the Emperor Napoleon, 

 if he were caught after the battle of Waterloo, one of the reasons he gave was "that the Emperor 

 had entirely ruined the Prussian nobility." Besides, all Germans are accustomed from the earliest 

 years to find Government regulating the affairs of their private life. 



Neither the machinery for interference nor the reasons for interference with private enterprise 

 exist in England. In Ireland there is something of French feeling about Government help 

 in more ways than one, perhaps because the landlords have been so long divided in feeling 

 from their tenants. To set up Government studs of stallions in England at reduced fees 

 would be to compete with patriotic landlords and industrious horse-leaders. In a word, Govern- 

 ment interference and assistance are essential in France and Germany, because those countries 

 do not possess the advantages we enjoy for promoting that particular object in resident gentry, 

 horse-loving farmers, and an unlimited demand at rising prices for any number of horses fit 

 for saddle or light harness. 



There are in England alone, without counting Scotland and Ireland, irrespective of packs 

 of harriers, more than 1 30 packs of fox-hounds, every one of which forms a " circumscription " 

 for encouraging horse-breeding. All these hunting-fields are open to every one who owns 

 a pony and cares to ride in them ; in nearly all every class of horse-owning society is represented. 

 Was there not a sweep once "who alius 'unted with the Duke ?" The majority of a hundred packs 

 of harriers are supported by farmers, and very small farmers too. 



In France or Germany, where by-thc-bye there is quite as good hunting as in Devonshire, 

 the New Poorest, Cumberland, or the mountainous parts of Wales, the native merchant or 

 professional man, not being noble or invited, who joined a hunt, would be considered and 

 treated as an impertinent intruder — the doctor would lose his patients, and the notary his 



