MILITARY VETERINARY POLITICS. 
489 
manding Officers both at Newbridge and Dublin ; and finding that 
Colonel Hay still adhered to his former opinion, your Petitioner 
requested Colonel Jackson to apply to the Lieutenant General 
commanding the district, to authorise a board of Veterinary Sur- 
geons to require and report upon the shoeing of the regiment, which 
application was peremptorily refused. Having been thus denied 
the only legitimate course your Petitioner possessed of settling a 
point involving his professional ability, your Petitioner wrote to 
the Principal Veterinary Surgeon, requesting him to submit this 
question also to the consideration of the Commander in Chief, at 
the same time expressing a hope that your Petitioner might be 
removed to another corps upon the first vacancy. In consequence 
of this, the Lieutenant General commanding the district was 
directed by His Grace the Duke of Wellington to proceed to 
Newbridge, to investigate the subject; when the Lieutenant Gene- 
ral expressed his entire satisfaction relative to the shoeing, and 
desired your Petitioner at the same time to furnish him, for the 
information of his Grace, with the particulars of any complaint 
which Petitioner might be desirous to urge against his Commanding 
Officer. Your Petitioner did furnish the statement required, which 
the Lieutenant General detained until he submitted it to the sur- 
veillance of Petitioner’s Commanding Officers, permitting them to 
make whatever comments they chose upon it. 
Your Petitioner, to his great surprise, was soon afterward 
ordered to wait on the Commander of the Forces in Ireland, to 
receive through him a most severe reprimand frbm His Grace the 
Duke of Wellington. As it was a lengthy document, and read to 
Petitioner in the presence of several officers, including Colonel 
Jackson, it would be impossible to recall the full particulars of this 
manuscript ; but your Petitioner well remembers being told “ that 
he was not answerable for the soundness or unsoundness of horses 
when purchased — that his duty was confined solely to the veterinary 
practice — that he had no right whatever to report the unsound 
horses to the Principal Veterinary Surgeon, without sending same 
through the medium of the Commanding Officer — that great praise 
was due to the officer who selected these horses, and great credit 
to the dealer who furnished them.” — The reprimand concluded by 
a threat at Petitioner’s “ peril to take any further notice of the 
subject.” Petitioner has the satisfaction to state, that he took the 
opinion of another veterinary surgeon, who was present at his 
examination of the seven unsound horses, before hre reported their 
unsoundness, and found that gentleman’s opinion to coincide with 
his own. Notwithstanding these two opinions, Colonel Jackson 
retained, and the dealer sold, horses completely blind! which has 
VOL. XX. 3 T 
