EVILS OF USURY. 243 
a guinea, but each and every year paid its own expenses, 
leaving a balance in his lordship’s favour, And I suspect if 
other people kept as strict an account, we should hear of more 
winners and fewer losers on the turf, and discover that, after 
all, racing, like other amusements, may be indulged in in 
a less expensive form than is generally supposed—possibly 
at half the cost of hunting. Large and small studs I have 
shown can be made self-subsisting ; and what has before been 
done, may be done again. But it is not so with other 
amusements. They are all more or less costly, and do not 
offer the remotest chance of returning to those who participate 
in them a guinea either of capital orexpenditure. But racing, 
if regulated and kept within prescribed limits, has the advan- 
tage over all other field sports, that besides the pleasure 
derived from it, it is possible with a limited income to gain 
a fortune by it, if not in the first, then in subsequent years. 
The gist of the matter is, that betting rather than racing 
ruins the majority of gentlemen on the turf. This is the real 
cause of all great disasters ; and yet without it, it must be 
admitted racing could not be carried on. You wage an 
unequal war with the bookmakers who subsist by betting. 
They back all, you back but one ; and, besides other advan- 
tages, they never lay too long odds, whilst you never obtain 
fair odds. Yet on occasion a good bet may, and should be 
made, when you havea good horse of your own. On the other 
hand, it should be a rigid principle never to back other 
people’s horses ; for of their merits you can know but little, 
and of their condition less. 
But, bad as is the result of indiscriminate betting, that of 
borrowing money from usurers is worse. Against such a 
revelation as that given at foot, who can stand? Or what 
practices on the turf can compare with such extortion and 
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