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are idle three parts of the year; and "when they are 

 employed at road or other work for two shiUingT> a 

 day what remains after feeding- them, and allowing 

 for your own time and labour in walking after them? 

 just as much as will pay for their keeping-, if they be 

 kept properly. There is one mode of occupation, 

 however, for your horses, which you on an average, 

 contrive to have, fifty-two days in the year, and which, 

 to say the truth, you industriously avail yourselves 

 of — I mean attendance upon every fair and ftmeral 

 that is within your neighbourhood — but I cannot see 

 that any pleasure is to be derived from visiting fairs, 

 unless you have more business at them, than merely 

 buying- a step for a spade, a handle for a flail, or nails 

 for your brogues, which you can purchase at home ; 

 nor can I see the necessity of attending- the ftinerahi 

 of those with whom you had neither relationship nor 

 intimacy. And as far as your horses are concerned 

 in these expecUtions, I have but too often occasion to 

 pity their sufferings, when I ^vitness the abuse they 

 undergo at funerals and fairs. How often do we see 

 a drunken, imfeeling fellow, cruelly spurring, and at 

 the same time reining in, the ill used animal, which 

 has been for hours patiently stai-ving at the door of 

 a pubhc house, while his brutal owner, insensible to 

 his fatigue and hunger, has been guzzling pimch or 

 raw spirits, until he is hardly able to mount again. 

 Now every one knows that working horses ought to 

 be treated careftilly and worked slowly, and that they 

 should not be even trotted at their work ; for one 

 day's over di'iving is worse than a week's regular field 

 work -with suitable keeping — but, as if this were 

 mere nonsense, the working horse besides being 

 shamefully abused, as I have above stated, is often 

 when unyoked from the plough or car, either rode 

 home, or to a scanty pastui'e, at full gallop, by some 

 imtrained and unthinking imp. What a waste of food, 

 M'hich would otherwise go to market, or be consumed 

 at home in rearing and fattening cattle for the butcher, 



