CAPTAIN SHABBYHOUNDE 231 



It has always appeared to us that the prejudice of the day 

 has affixed a very illiberal and unmerited odium on the trade 

 of a horse-dealer. Doubtless there are scamps and cheats in 

 the business, just as there are scamps and cheats in all trades, 

 but taking them as a whole, we believe there is more honesty 

 among the regular dealers than there is among what are called 

 gentlemen dealers. Let us examine the position and peculiari- 

 ties of the two. The licensed dealer generally does business 

 in a large way : for one horse that passes through the hands of 

 the gentleman dealer he will have fifty through his, and though 

 quick sale is the soul of trade, and it is his interest to keep 

 passing horses through his hands, he gets far more abused for 

 an occasional failure than the gentleman dealer, who must 

 know all the faults and weak points of his horses from the 

 length of time he keeps them, and the personal trials and 

 examinations he makes of them. We consider it just as im- 

 possible for the licensed dealer — at least a licensed dealer in a 

 fair way of business — to know all the ins and outs and peculiari- 

 ties of the horses passing through his hands, as it is for the 

 gentleman dealer to be ignorant of them. The licensed dealer 

 must occasionally make mistakes, must occasionally be taken 

 in himself, yet if he passes the deceptive horse on quickly to a 

 customer, he gets blown up and abused, as if it had been a 

 premeditated robbery. 



With respectable dealers, the faulty horses are the exception, 

 and not the general rule ; but we have too much reason to 

 think that with many of what are called " gentlemen dealers " 

 the faulty are the rule and the sound ones the exception. It is 

 ridiculous to suppose that men whose business is horse-dealing 

 — who have been at it all their lives, and many of their fathers 

 before them — -with the extensive ramifications of long-continued 

 business — can find it their interest to deal in what must be un- 

 satisfactory articles to their customers, or yet that such men 

 are to be beat out of their own markets by the newly jumped 



