366 
LAMENESS. 
SOUNDNESS, AS OPPOSED TO LAMENESS. 
Reluctantly as we enter on this difficult and much-debated 
question, we feel it our duty, in a paper on lameness, to make 
some observations on the subject, though these observations will be 
rather of a general than of a particular nature, and have especial 
reference to soundness, regarded as the converse of or opposite 
state to lameness. No person buys or sells a horse without feel- 
ing some concern as to the soundness, of the animal: the pur- 
chaser is apprehensive lest his new horse should from any cause 
turn out unserviceable or unequal to that for the performance of 
which he has bought him ; the vender is apprehensive, either lest 
the animal, in other hands, should not prove that sound and effec- 
tive servant he conceived or represented him to be, or lest some 
unrepresented or concealed fault or defect he is aware the animal 
possesses may now, in his new master’s hands, be brought to light. 
Soundness, as opposed to actual or decided lameness (or as synoni- 
mous with good health), is a state too well understood to need any 
definition or description : when we come, however, to draw a line 
between soundness and lameness in their less distinguishable 
forms — to mark the point at which one ends and the other be- 
gins — we meet a difficulty, and this difficulty increases when we 
find ourselves called on to include under our denomination of un- 
soundness that which is likely or has a tendency to bring forth 
lameness. 
The number of “ horse causes,” as they are commonly called, 
that have engaged the attention of our courts of law, have brought 
eminent persons of the legal profession to our aid in the solution 
of this intricate question. Lord Mansfield, years ago, made an 
attempt to settle the point according to an ad valor um scale ; set- 
ting every horse down as sound in the eye of the law whose cost 
or value amounted to a certain sum. This, of course, was law that 
never could hold in horse transactions. Lord Ellenborough legis- 
lated with a great deal more knowledge of horseflesh. The law he 
laid down was, that “ any infirmity which rendered a horse less 
fit for present use or convenience constituted unsoundness:” a law 
which, though it admitted of great latitude of construction, and to 
some especial cases did not prove applicable at all, was still a 
wholesome and practicable one in a majority of cases of dispute. 
Lord Tenterden made but little improvement on it when he pro- 
nounced every horse unsound that “ that could not go through the 
same labour as before the existence of the defect or blemish in 
dispute, and with the same degrees of facility.” 
