THE REMOUNTING OF CAVALRY. 
461 
same price without any restriction ; for instance, the same sum is 
paid to the dealer for a bad three as a good four years old, than 
which nothing can be more absurd ; for the supposition that a three 
is as valuable as a four-years old, all things being equal, is opposed 
to the spirit of commerce in horse-flesh, and certainly not respected 
in England. Perhaps expediency has a good deal to do with this. 
Regiments requiring twenty or thirty horses will often take half 
the number of an inferior description, in order to complete, should 
horses be scarce ; because it is deemed essential to the apparent 
efficiency of the corps that it be complete, having their remedy to 
cast those which fail without reference to the service of the animal, 
so that you may have the value in one , but impoverished by many , 
when the whole ought to be good. I think, therefore, as the evils 
arise from bad buying, either on the part of the dealer or the passing 
officer — whose peculiar fitness for the functions of passing not 
always being proved by experience, and which empowers them to 
entail on the service the expense of animals so frequently useless 
— that the most effectual remedy will be to pluck up the evil by 
the root, do away with dealers altogether, and vest their functions 
in other hands, where real benefits may result. 
To replace the commanding officer and dealer, I naturally look to 
the profession of a cavalry officer of some description for election ; 
and, I think, it may fairly be pronounced beforehand, that a Board 
of Officers composed of a major or captain, a veterinary-surgeon 
and paymaster, provided they be well selected (all private and un- 
worthy purposes being suppressed by restrictions), will answer the 
purpose. I do not think that many commanding officers would 
express discontent if they were relieved from purchasing : it is 
said, however, that an esprit de corps exists which produces great 
competition to mount their regiments well. It is quite true that 
commanding officers exclusively charged with the fitness of their 
horses may be animated by a sense of the importance with which 
they are invested ; and if they would exert the means which are 
bestowed upon them, and that knowledge of the young re-mount 
necessarily co-existed with their rank of commanding officer, we 
should not now be asking how it is that some regiments are so 
much worse mounted than others, which is at once a commentary 
on their fitness. Again, their tenure of office is uncertain — fre- 
quently brief ; and let not the fact be overlooked, that very few of 
them think alike about the animal. Many of them will transact 
every thing in their own persons — others prefer employing what 
they consider efficacious means, and trust entirely to a dealer — 
others, again, rely on their veterinary-surgeons, and occasionally 
we find these gentlemen have done credit to themselves by the ac- 
tive part they have taken. Mr. Wilkinson, late of the l7th, Mr. 
VOL. XXIII. 3 Q 
