P RO FESSIONAL DEPRESSION. 
289 
£. s. d. 
Keep of horse (including rent of stable) 2 s. per diem. . 36 10 0 
Half of the services of a man working for 2 s. per diem .18 5 0 
Tax for horse, £1..8s..9a?. ; ditto for man, £1..4s 2 T2 9 
Shoeing £3 ; saddlery (say) £2 5 0 0 
£62 7 9 
In this account nothing is said of outlay for purchase of horse, 
nothing about diminution of value from wear, nothing about hazard 
from accident or unforeseen mortality, nothing about sickness or 
lameness requiring the attendance of a veterinary surgeon. Come, 
therefore, to add for these items £8 or £10 a-year — and we can 
hardly, in the instance of a horse of any value, say less — we arrive 
at a total of somewhere about, in round numbers, £70 per annum ; 
which is certainly paying rather expensively for the services of a 
horse, considering we can ride in an omnibus or a steam-boat nearly 
ten miles for sixpence, and can travel at the rate of about twopence 
per mile along a rail-road. And so, we can hardly feel surprised 
at persons putting down their horses, at those at least doing so 
that could afford to keep but one ; neither can we, for the same 
reason, wonder that people should contract as much as possible the 
number in their studs, or make one horse serve two purposes — 
of which we have no better example than in the Brougham car- 
riages and other single-horse heavy drags, “ cruelty-vans,” now so 
prevalent about the streets of our great metropolis. As the object 
of the engineer is to construct an engine which shall, with the 
smallest consumption of fuel, do the greatest amount of work, so, with 
our Brougham drivers, that horse is the most valuable which is able 
to do the work of two. Fewer pleasure horses consequently being 
kept, and the expense of keeping them accounting for this diminu- 
tion of their number, fewer cases of sickness and lameness are likely 
to find their way to our doors. 
Supposing, however, that the horse either of the penurious man, or 
of the knowing man, or of the man who has a knowing groom, does 
happen to fall sick or lame, will he send for a veterinary surgeon 1 
Probably not: the first will say he “ cannot afford to call in the 
doctor,” little thinking his horse may die, or become irremediably 
VOL. XVIII. r r 
