EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
653 
become importers as well. For some years past, certain of 
our second-class dealers and others, have been in the habit 
of going to the Continent for horses for dray and cart work, 
but more particularly for what goes by the name of black- 
work (mourning coaches and hearses); and of late they have 
been seeking other descriptions of horses as well—buying at 
about £20 a-head or less, five years old and fresh, a descrip¬ 
tion of Flanders horse, not very unlike our Suffolk punch, 
which turns out to fetch about £5 or £10 a-head more in 
our market; though it remains to be proved, and becomes 
very questionable, what sort of workers such horses will turn 
out compared with our own, and how much in the end they 
may prove cheaper or dearer than our indigenous stock. 
Whether traffic in horses be advantageous to us as a com¬ 
mercial nation, we will not pretend to say: that is a question 
of experience, which, give it time, will work its own solu¬ 
tion. Our legislature possesses, as over all other commercial 
transactions, absolute control over this ; and can at any time, 
of course, check it, or even put a stop to it. At present, the 
trade is all but equivalent to being thrown open, there being 
imposed but a duty of £l per horse. 
If the present paucity of good horses be occasioned by large 
exportations, and especially by the abstraction of our best 
mares, that is an evil which at any time admits of remedy 5 
supposing it be deemed advisable for the legislature to deal 
with it; or it is one which, it is possible, in the course of time 
may remedy itself, by the event of good horses becoming too 
dear even for foreign dealers in horses to become purchasers 
of them. On the other hand, if the growing paucity can be 
shown to arise from diminished production as well, then does 
it become our duty, by way of remedy, to afford all the 
national encouragement in our power to the breeding of 
horses, or, at least, to the breeding of good , by which we 
would be understood, useful horses. 
4 s 
VOL. XXV. 
