292 Tlie Report of the Royal Commission on Horse-Breeding. 
their participation must assume, with regard to mares — more 
money ; and with regard to produce — more money, and a stage 
of progress which has not yet been reached. Thus, when it 
was pointed out by the Duke of Portland that the Commission 
could only deal with the funds at present at their disposal, and 
that an increased grant was a shaky basis for useful argument, 
the witnesses all preferred that the money should not be broken 
up, and that it found its best uses and employment in the sub- 
sidising of stallions. 
Many, however, urged increasing the number of stallions by 
lowering the premiums. I have gone minutely into all the 
evidence given upon this point. It does not appear to me that 
a good case for lowering the premiums is made out. It is only 
by putting on a distinctly high class of horse that we can hope 
to knock off the unsound and indifferent stallions which have 
done so much harm — poisoned our blood, as Mr. Lumley Hodgson 
once said. Besides, in view of a brisk demand 8 for stallions, to 
which many witnesses drew attention, we should surely be drop- 
ping back into the jaws of the old difficulty. 9 
Lord Harrington, a witness who speaks from wide knowledge 
and experience, would like to see the premiums reduced to 100/. 
or 150/., and is so consistent in his view that he states it as 
his opinion that lowering the premiums would give us a no 
worse class of horse than raising them would give us a better. 10 
Such as they are, he thinks we are already getting the best. 
Mr. Jackson, of Whitecross, whose forbears bred Lottery, is in 
favour of lowering the stallion premiums, 11 not so much to 
increase the number of stallions, but to find money for a dif- 
ferent premium system, which would permit of subsidising 
mares ; but Mr. Jackson states expressly that his remarks as 
to mares and stallions apply only to the district in which he 
resides. Thus, although generally dissatisfied with the present 
scheme, he says, 12 when asked whether it might not be »advan- 
" 1702 (Capt. Fife) ; 2174 (Mr. James Martin). 
• This difficulty is very clearly explained in the first report presented to 
Parliament, in the following terms : — 
"It is a matter of common notoriety that, year after year, the United King- 
dom has been swept by the agents of foreign Governments for the stallions and 
the mares best suited to their purpose, and they have been bought with public 
money, and taken from the country, frequently at prices with which it was 
impossible for private enterprise successfully to compete. The consequence of 
this has-been that, with the exception of the highest class of stallions and of 
mares for the breeding of racehorses, this country has been left for the most 
part with the inferior and often unsound animals which t lie foreign agent has 
rejected ; and the result has been a gradual, but marked, deterioration in the 
general breed for which England at one time was famous " (page v.). 
»• 2444. " 2906. 12 3075-6. 
