AN APOLOGY FOR DEALERS. 507 



be made responsible — though it often is — for what 

 may happen to a horse for a certain time after he 

 has been sold, whereas it may be the consequence of 

 mismanagement, by the purchaser, particularly in 

 putting him to work too soon, when, in what is 

 called " dealer's condition" — namely, all fat and 

 no muscle. Moreover, they are entitled perhaps to 

 some advantage over the buyer, as also over the 

 seller, from the price at which they must have pur- 

 chased their experience ; for our common judgment 

 of figure, animate or inanimate, is by no means an 

 inherent faculty, but a practical result of expe- 

 rience, and often repeated experiments. Indeed, a 

 great moral philosopher says, in allusion to games 

 of chance — that the position that one side ought 

 not to have any advantage over the other, is 

 neither practicable nor true ; not practicable, be- 

 cause that perfect equality of skill and judgment 

 which this rule requires, is seldom to be met 

 with. And as to that rule of justice which the 

 same writer requires to be inculcated, namely — 

 " that the seller is bound in conscience to disclose 

 the faults of what he offers for sale,"' we are 

 not to expect so much virtue in horse-dealers, 

 whom it would be difficult to convince by the same 

 rule of ethics, (actions being the same, as to all 

 moral purposes which proceed from the same mo- 

 tives and produce the same effects,) that it is mak- 

 ing a distinction without a difference, to esteem it 

 a fraud to magnify beyond the truth the virtues of 

 what they have to sell, but none to conceal its 

 faults. It would, however, greatly add to the value 



