228 HORSE-RACING IN FRANCE 



thrown open to English competition or reprisals were 

 threatened. 



Lord Falmouth, accordingly, gave notice of a motion 

 — to come before the Jockey Club in 1877 — which 

 would exclude foreign horses from comj^etition in ' cer- 

 tain weight for age races ' on English racecourses. It 

 is due to Lord Falmouth to note that he had for years 

 been trying to impress his views upon the Club, and 

 that he cannot be accused of acting under the influence 

 of sudden panic or of a temporary smart and sense of 

 injury : liis cup of bitterness, rather, had been gradually 

 filling up, and at last overflowed. He did not foresee, 

 perhaps, that, notwithstanding the obtrusive foreigners, 

 he would some day come to be credited with having 

 cleared more than 150,000/. in stakes during his career 

 on the Turf. However his notice of motion led to 

 some remarks in the ' Daily Telegraph,' and he replied to 

 those remarks in a letter dated January 23, 1877. That 

 letter was especially worthy of notice as containing an 

 expression of Lord Falmouth's opinion that there are 

 no more cakes and ale, there is no more old-fashioned 

 sport, but that the breeding and running of race horses 

 are, in his own words, ' matters of hard business in 

 which British interests are involved.' To some ears 

 tins sounded strange doctrine for an English nobleman 

 to utter. However the motion was duly submitted, and 

 still more stringent measures of protection were pro- 

 posed by Lords Vivian and Hard wi eke. Controversy 

 ran high, articles appeared in nearly all the newspapers, 

 and letters were published in the ' Daily Telegraph ' and 

 in the ' Times ' during February from Lord Falmouth, 

 Lord Ailesbury, Admiral Eous, and, on the part of the 

 French, from M. Auguste Lupin, the representative of 

 the French Jockey Club (though M. Ernest Leroy, one 



