296 PHYSIC GRATIS. 



It may be fifty to one against their getting him ; 

 but if in one case in fifty they do succeed, it is all in 

 their favour, for spoiling the sale of forty-nine horses 

 costs them nothing, and getting the fiftieth is all 

 money in their pockets. Conscience they have none; 

 so the virtually robbing, or, to use a milder term, 

 spoiling the market of forty -nine persons to the tune 

 of hundreds, is nothing in their estimation, if it gains 

 them twenty, ten, or five pounds, ay, or five shillings. 

 But how can they spoil the sale, may be asked? 

 Very easily ; and this is one of the hundred ways in 

 which they do it. 



People are always more prone to listen to any 

 censure than they are to praise of any thing. A bit 

 of scandal always goes down. Ay, blush, fellow man, 

 when I assert that it does so even when scandal is 

 levelled at lovely woman : there is a devilish sort of 

 pleasure mankind has in hearing other persons or 

 their property abused. Kochefoucault was not much 

 out when he said, II y a quelque chose dans les mal- 

 heurs de nos meilleurs amis qui ne nous deplait pas. 

 He knew human, I might say inhuman, nature ; one 

 word said in dispraise will go farther in biassing men's 

 minds, than twenty said in commendation whether 

 it be in the case of a horse, a woman's character, or 

 Captain Warner's invisible annihilator. 



The worthy pair I have just mentioned having 

 half persuaded the owner, and quite persuaded many 

 others, that there is something wrong about the 

 horse (for the opinion or even insinuation of a third 

 party will in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred go 

 further in persuading people that a horse has some 

 fault than all the owner can say to the contrary) 



