348 HOESE-EACING IN FRANCE 



CHAPTER XIII. 



CONCLUSION. 



Before author and reader part there are two or 

 three matters which it may be worth while to handle 

 separately. 



First of all it is interesting to observe with what 

 different purposes and in what different styles the 

 English Jockey Club and tlie French Jockey Club 

 (though the latter was in some respects an imitation of 

 the former) seem to have been founded. The English 

 Jockey Club, so far as there is any evidence to be 

 obtained, was at its origin (in 1751 or thereabouts) 

 an association of noblemen and gentlemen, who had 

 nothing but private, selfish, exclusive ends in view, 

 who wished to separate themselves from the vulgar 

 herd or at any rate to keep it under and at a respect- 

 ful distance, who instituted plates of their own, to be 

 run for solely by horses of their own, ridden by the 

 owners themselves or their friends and equals, and 

 who certainly do not seem to have issued any public 

 manifesto proclaiming any patriotic views or any serious 

 intentions of devoting themselves to amelioration of 

 the English breed of horses. It was not so with the 

 French Jockey Club or Societe d'Encouragement ; their 

 object was professedly patriotic and wholly free from 

 private, selfish considerations ; they even bound them- 

 selves not to reap any pecuniary profit, however sue- 



