231 
THE VETERINARIAN, APRIL 1, 1852. 
Ne quid falsi dicere audeat, ne quid veri non audeat.—C icero. 
M. Gourdon* has had a wipe at our nation and our nation¬ 
alities ; and we admire him no less for his honesty of opinion 
than for his frankness of expression ; while we feel quite sure 
he will no less estimate our retort due, though it should turn out 
to be not altogether “ the retort courteous.” We acknowledge 
our comparatively ill-favoured climate, but believe it is pretty 
well compensated for, so far as soil is concerned, by the supe¬ 
rior attention paid to agricultural science, and the untiring 
industry with which such science is worked out. We know 
we are “ a nation of shopkeepers,” busied, one and all of us, in 
“ making money,” and striving hard who can make the most; 
and every day we see him who has had the good fortune to fill 
his pockets, not only “ elbowing ” the nobles of the land in the 
salons and drawing-rooms of fashionable life, but actually taking 
his seat upon the same form with them in the senatus jjopulorum, 
even supposing his riches do not, at some subsequent period, 
place him amid the ranks of aristocracy itself. All this we 
own to, and, in the full enjoyment of our national freedom 
— unequalled all over the world—put up with ; nay, really 
find ourselves a happier people than those who are for ever 
agitating and revolutionizing their countries and their constitu¬ 
tions. We admit, we are a proud people, dogmatically fond of 
our opinions and practices; and though, for our own part, we 
are by no means wedded to the method of shoeing horses ordi¬ 
narily practised in England, still do we believe that most of our 
professional countrymen are so attached to it, so blind to its 
imperfections, that nothing short of a “ revolution ” would be 
likely to turn them out of their inveterate courses. 
But, in the condemnation of the English practice of shoeing, 
M. Gourdon, for want of accurate notices of the several forges 
he visited, has been too sweeping in that censure into which, 
after all, he has evidently been in a great measure led by suf¬ 
fering his national prejudices to get the better both of his 
observation and his judgment. Could he but re-visit the same 
* See his “ Visit to the Grand Exhibition,” page 201 of the present number. 
