298 ATTACKS ON THE TURF. 



answer every end. Or should these disgraces not be perpe- 

 trated, how many are the means by which races may be lost 

 or won ! A simple breach of confidence may answer the end, 

 information may be conveyed sufficient to neutralize the hopes 

 of the confiding employer, and the one book be made square, 

 although the other may become a memorandum of ruin." 



We may pause for a moment in our quotation to examine 

 the relevancy of what he has said to this point. If such 

 things were done, there would be some ground for such an 

 argument. But he bases his thesis on an utter hypothesis. 

 No jockey or trainer bets in the way he describes, and there- 

 fore does not fall under the temptation. And it is on hypo- 

 thesis only that he ventures to condemn a class. He says, 

 "The elder Chifney was the first to -back a horse in a race 

 other than the one he rode, and he lost owing to the horse's 

 unfit condition." This was the rider's opinion, soundly based 

 no doubt and justified by the result, though he might have 

 been mistaken in his opinion, and might have had to pay 

 dearly for it. I confess I cannot conceive the dishonesty that is 

 attached to such conduct. It cannot be the mere fact of the 

 jockey's betting, or of his being the first that did so, and 

 nothing of an improper nature is proved against him. All he 

 did was to ride one horse and back another in the same race. 

 But why should he not have done so .-' What reason can be 

 given to show, that if a jockey rode a carthorse of his em- 

 ployer's, he should be required, if he betted at all, to back him 

 against an Eclipse ; or if you will, against one of his own 

 horses of which he thought well and had confidence in his 

 brother professional in the saddle ? For racing has its glorious 

 uncertainties. One horse may fall down, or go the wrong 

 course, and from various reasons others may be disqualified 

 and the carthorse may be the winner, and his jockey having 



