536 
THE CHARTER. 
“ duly qualified” too, who, when they arrived at their several 
destinations in the country, became quite a laughing-stock to the 
very farriers who were there in practice before them, and whom 
they were sent expressly to supplant, to say nothing of their being, 
from lack of education, totally unfitted for the society of medical 
men. Persons who were hardly able to pen the letters composing 
their own names, even had they been acquainted with the ortho- 
graphy of them — grooms, livery-servants in their masters’ liveries, 
men from the plough-tail, shop-boys who had never looked at a 
horse before in their lives, in fine, out-of-elbow educationless 
worthies of every grade and denomination, all, all flocked to the 
Veterinary College, and all at periods miraculously short returned 
home with their “ diplomas” in their pockets, certifying that they 
were “duly qualified to practise the veterinary art ! ” And this 
is the state of affairs to which we are invited, nay, “ prayed” to 
return ! 
But how has the Charter affected all this 1 Among other changes 
of import it has, by extending and heightening the boundaries 
by which a veterinary diploma is properly surrounded, already 
accomplished an important reform in the education of the student 
of the veterinary art, and this it has effected against every and the 
utmost opposition on the part of the schools. Neither the uneducated 
nor the unqualified candidate will find the door of admission into 
the corporate body open to him. Under the supervision of the 
Council, veterinary examinations are conducted by men, both of 
the medical and veterinary profession, of established reputation and 
capability; and this is a state of affairs which the more it is probed 
the sounder it will be found at bottom, and which in due season 
will be found to yield fruits of a very different character from such 
as have grown up under that obsolete regime to which the 
Agricultural Societies, urged on by the veterinary colleges, would 
have us return. If any body — if, indeed, the Home Secretary — 
entertains any doubt about the matter, let him at once institute 
inquiry — let him, we repeat, take every means fairly to probe 
the matter to the very bottom ; and we say, again and again, that, 
constituted as the present Board of Examiners is, and pursuing the 
systematic course in which — in accordance with rules laid down 
for their own guidance by the College of Surgeons— they are now 
