354 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
the Corporate College ; therefore it is not unnatural that the 
offsets of the other, amounting perhaps to about a third or 
fourth of the whole number — should, for the most part, be 
reckoned among the absentees. Still, non-attendance at such 
a meeting is to be complained of ; and a cause for this, were 
the subject a little more closely investigated, might be dis- 
covered : resting as it must do, either with the members 
themselves, or with the Royal College. 
There can be no doubt but that no small amount of apathy, 
or something w^orse, is yet. we feel ashamed but compelled to 
say it, dominant in the Veterinary Profession. There are 
too many, we fear, who take no interest whatever in what 
is going forward ; w hile others there are who do not, but 
would interest themselves providing they could see there was 
any advantage to be derived from it : their usual answer 
to any remonstrance made to them on the subject being 
“ What is to be got by it ? ” 
Our ow n opinion on the charter is this — that, as it stands, 
it has not been, indeed is not capable of being, pro- 
ductive of much good; though, armed with such powers 
and privileges as it has a right to look forw ard to, the pos- 
session of it might be converted into an instrument of great 
service to the public as w T ell as to the profession. Were the 
“ Bill of Exemptions ” it sues for, granted, that would con- 
fer benefit upon its members, and by the majority of them 
be valued as such ; and were to that added, the right or 
privilege, by law^, of assuming the name of Veterinary Surgeons 
to the exclusion of all empirics and pretenders to the art, 
a greater boon still w T ould be conferred, and one that would 
prompt or force all, at once, to acknowledge that a great, 
though no more than just, privilege w ? as conferred upon 
a member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, 
Were such the case, there is a probability that the recu- 
sant school might feel disposed to go w T ith the charter. But 
why, in the present state of affairs, does it not go that way? — 
why is it still non-complying and refractory ? We hardly re- 
member — indeed, w e have no great mind to recollect — the 
grounds upon which the Northern school seceded from its 
