ATTACK ON TRAINERS AND JOCKEYS. 297 



nor on the other hand, others suppressed to the injur}' of 

 his arguments. 



"The betting," he says, "of jockeys and trainers, to a vast 

 amount, has now become a system extensive, open, and 

 avowed. It is no longer the restricted and temperate betting 

 which prevailed in former times, on horses in which the 

 master and employer of these people had an interest, but 

 they must have their books as regular as the boldest gambler 

 of the course. Now, here is a system which strikes at the 

 very root of all confidence in the affairs of the turf. What ! 

 the horses of sportsmen to be entrusted to a set of avowed 

 gamblers, who may have a direct interest in causing their 

 defeat ! What confidence can be placed in a jockey on whose 

 success in a match with another horse he or his confederates 

 may have thousands depending ? Will he win in opposition 

 to an interest so great .'' Those who believe so, must have 

 a higher confidence in the virtues of Newmarket than our 

 knowledge of human nature elsewhere justifies. The first 

 admission on record of a jockey betting on the horse opposed 

 to that which he himself rode, is the elder Chifney, He lost 

 the race, but he justifies himself by saying, that he knew the 

 horse he rode was unfit to win. The argument of the jockey 

 is not worth the tassel of his velvet cap ; and the principle 

 contended for needs only a little extension to justify every kind 

 of roguery. This very jockey lived to acquire a splendid stud, 

 to build houses, to sport his equipage, and to experience the 

 revolution of fortune's wheel, by dying a beggar. But the 

 training grooms, more trusted still — what can be said of their 

 concern with the gambling speculations, by which their 

 interest and their duty have been placed at variance ? What 

 need of their master-key to guard their troughs from the 

 introduction of the arsenic or the sublimate ; or of the live 

 fishes, to show that the water is as pure as their own thoughts ? 

 A few orders of the head groom on the training-ground, a 

 few doses out of time of Barbadoes aloes, a gentle opiate from 

 the apothecary's shop, all for the health of the horse, will 



