196 WEIGHTS AND DISTANCES. 
long distances, most of the races being run at heavy weights, 
up to and over 10st.: and he suffered no more than the 
others from doing so much work and carrying weights so 
heavy. After this I think no one will say 7 st. is too much 
for a horse to carry. In my opinion no horse should be 
permitted to carry less. To raise the standard 21 lbs, 
would, I think, be a judicious movement, and make it far 
preferable to the present low scale. 
Admiral Rous’s dictum on the subject may now be appro- 
priately quoted ; it is perhaps specially remarkable for its 
advocacy of a higher standard, and its paradoxical reasoning 
against the change. 
“A high-weight standard,” he says, “is never popular. 
Owners of horses object to gst., although they have no 
objection to run in a Queen’s Plate, carrying 10st. I have 
always,” he continues, “been an advocate of a high scale; 
in 1852 I recommended that the spring handicaps should 
commence at Iost. 7lbs. Experience teaches me _ that, 
owing to the prejudice of trainers, a high standard is a 
certain failure with the best calculation of weight; and the 
clerks of the course well know that a light-weight handicap, 
like a fat horse, covers its own defects.” 
Here the Admiral frankly avers, in unmistakable language, 
that he is in favour of a high standard, and that the weights 
should be raised to lost. 7]bs. He even advocates it. But 
the light-weight handicap, he says, pleases the clerks of the 
course and covers its own defects; as if the clerks of the 
course are the only people whose interest is to be studied. 
With due respect to the memory of the gallant and lamented 
gentleman, I submit that two weaker reasons were never put 
forth as a pretext for the pertinacious adherence to a system 
admittedly wrong. 
