EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
652 
The consequence of such depression in prices was, that 
dealers in horses, in London more especially, soon found they 
had not the same sale as formerly for their carriage-stock and 
hunters, at least at the same high prices; and this, as a matter 
of course, operated on the country market. As soon as dealers 
became unable to vend their horses to the same amount or 
advantage as before, they necessarily found themselves com¬ 
pelled to restrict their purchases from the breeders; nor 
would the latter be able to dispose of their stock, save under 
a proportionate fall of price. At this the breeders seem to 
have taken alarm;—either curtailing their breeding establish¬ 
ments, or breeding a less costly description of horse; and so, 
either w ay, diminishing the supply of good horses. 
Whether this was or w r as not the case with the breeders of 
horses, however, meanwhile came into our horse-fairs a set 
of new r customers—foreigners—w ? ho, possessing nowhere in 
their ow r n countries such cattle as ours, freely and largely 
made purchase of our best horses, especially of our mares , and 
of some stallions as well, for the purpose of exportation for 
their ow r n use. To w hat extent this export trade is at the 
present time, or has been for some years carried on, we have 
just now, no means of ascertaining. Certain, however, it is 
that the trade has been a large one—to the number, probably, 
of some thousands of horses annually—which alone would be 
sufficient to render good horses scarce and difficult to be 
“ picked up;” and w r ould operate with twofold effect in pro¬ 
ducing this result, supposing, as we are informed has been 
the case, that the actual breeding establishments have really 
undergone retrenchments. 
A foreign trade in horses is, to our country, a compara¬ 
tively novel kind of commerce. It seems to have originated 
in the surplusage of good horses among ourselves, in combi¬ 
nation with the offering of prices by foreign marchands de 
chevaux such as we could no longer, under the circumstances, 
afford to give for them at home: the stimulus for foreigners 
to become purchasers being the general superiority of our 
produce to that of their own countries. 
We, however, are not only exporters of horses: we have 
