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THE VETERINARIAN, JULY 1, 1851. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat. — Cicero. 
Since the publication of the Charter, now seven years and 
more ago, nothing in the profession has occurred to afford us 
greater gratification than the announcement we are this month 
called on to make, of the introduction of a Bill into Parliament — 
whereof a copy will be found in our pages — for the exemption 
of “ Veterinary Surgeons, and Professors and Teachers of (at?) 
Veterinary Colleges and Schools” from “serving the office of 
Constable, Collector of Assessed and otherTaxes, Churchwarden, 
Overseer of the Poor, or any other office, County or Parochial ; 
and from being returned and from serving on any Jury, Leet, 
or Inquest whatsoever,” &c. Such a boon as this, though too 
long deferred, come when it will, cannot fail to be most accept- 
able to private practitioners. Nothing can be more annoying or 
vexatious than having irresistible calls like these made upon a 
veterinary surgeon in busy practice, at a time when the de- 
mands upon his attendance and judgment are such that it is 
impossible for any substitute to supply his place. An animal’s 
life is in danger, or lameness calling for prompt and judicious 
decision is painfully pending ; and the veterinary surgeon is 
peremptorily called away to serve on a jury, or to transact some 
important business of his parish ! The result is easily guessed at. 
In the one case, the animal, worth perhaps forty or fifty, or a 
hundred pounds even, may die for need of that skill and experi- 
ence which might have saved his life ; in the other, lameness 
may run on to destruction of foot — and it might as well, for what 
the horse is likely to be good for afterwards, run on to destruction 
of life itself — in the absence of the man who would have dis- 
covered its seat, and applied the proper remedy in time to 
save the animal from such disastrous consequences. 
Our readers will give us credit for never having ceased to 
entertain sanguine hopes of obtaining privileges such as surgeons 
in practice have all along enjoyed to our exclusion. So that those 
who have put such questions to us as, “ what has the Charter 
done for us?” — “ what are we the better for it?” — are likely 
