98 
VICIOUS HORSES. 
siderable experience and practice, and every advantage and appli¬ 
ance to favour his ability. 
In this speculative age many more improbable things daily take 
place than an equestrian college for the education or breaking of 
horses. I have the thing all arranged in my mind, from the stabling 
to the lunging ring. 
From whatever cause a horse may be vicious, be it hereditary, 
or brought on by bad judgment, bad temper, timidity, or brutality 
in his breaker, one thing is quite certain,—the vice must be cured, 
or, at all events, partially so, before he can be of general use to us. 
Some persons might thoughtlessly say, It matters little what made 
a horse vicious, if he is so. This is quite a mistake; for the origin 
of it matters every thing, both as regards the probability of cure 
and the mode of setting about it. 
If a man has had his leg amputated, it certainly matters little to 
him whether the necessity of amputation arose from the kick of a 
horse, or the falling of a chimney ; but it would matter a great deal 
whether it arose from accident or disease ; as, in the latter case, he 
might live under the constant dread of a return of the complaint in 
some other part. But he must be a most unlucky wight if he 
should lose his other leg from the same kind of accident that lost 
him the first. 
It is something like this as regards vice in an animal: if it is 
hereditary, or proceeds from a bad disposition altogether, it then 
becomes very difficult to eradicate ; if, on the other hand, it arises 
from treatment, we must then investigate what that treatment was, 
that, by adopting its opposite, we may, by time and patience, undo 
what never ought to have been done. 
If, for instance, a colt becomes self-willed, from the timidity or 
too much lenity on the part of the breaker (a circumstance that does 
not occur once in a hundred times), it then becomes necessary, by 
determined resolution, to shew him that he has at last met with his 
match; and the fortiter in re must immediately and determinedly 
follow the failure of the suaviter in modo. And here boldness, 
strength, and resolution on the rider's part will generally produce 
a proper effect without resorting to punishment; for the animal is 
only like a spoiled child, self-willed, from having been allowed to 
have his own way. And even supposing what he does amounts, 
in point of fact, to the same thing as vice—such, for instance, as 
refusing to go the way we want him—it is only vice from habit, 
not vice from a sulky, savage, or violent disposition ; though he 
would probably be made to evince one, or all, of these propensities 
by undue punishment. If the spoiled child and the spoiled colt 
find that by resistance they gain their ends, they will ever resist 
where compliance is in any way contrary to their own inclinations; 
