36 
THE HOESE. 
CLASSES OF BRITISH HORSES. 
From these two causes, the means of internal intercourse have been prodigiously increased, and the modes and rate of travelling 
greatly changed. The method of conveying letters by public coaches, begun in 1784, was immediately followed by a more expe¬ 
ditious rate of travelling, and by an increase in the number of public carriages throughout the country. The rate of travelling, 
from being four or five miles in the hour, increased to six, seven, and eight, and now at length to ten, and even twelve * The 
effect of this change in the rate of travelling has produced a corresponding one in the kinds of horses employed. The coarse 
and heavy horses of former times were little fitted for this increased exertion, and hence the substitution became necessary of 
a lighter class with superior breeding. The demand, too, for horses thus employed is large and constant, not only from the 
numbers employed, but from the waste of the animals. Although a class of horses better suited for the service than the old 
has been employed, and the stages have been greatly shortened, the burdens could not be reduced in proportion to the increase 
of speed; and hence the exaction on the muscular powers of the animals has been greatly augmented. We may please our¬ 
selves with the speed and facility with which our journeys are performed, but assuredly our convenience is served at the expense 
of an unheard of degree of animal suffering. In no country does so great waste of the lives of horses take place as in England, 
and in no country, it is humiliating to own, is there so much cruelty exercised towards these faithful servants. The mortality of 
horses in the British Isles is at least as three to one, as compared with that which exists in any other country in Europe. Not 
only does the general demand for horses of all kinds cause them to be employed at an earlier period of life than in other coun¬ 
tries, but the cruel service of these public carriages being one in which our finest saddle-horses are often doomed to end their 
lives, a great increase in the general mortality is produced. When the powers of our saddle-horses begin to fail from age, or 
when they have met with accidents, or have suffered from the effects of diseases, they are transferred, in the course of trade, to 
this their new and last employment. How many fine hunters and saddle-horses of all kinds, after having rendered their best 
services to successive masters, are forced into this terrible service, from which they are never released until they have sunk under 
their tasks ! How many beautiful creatures do we see, spavined, greased, foundered, and otherwise lame, whipped along in our 
heavily loaded vehicles, and forced to fulfil tasks under which they must shortly perish ! Such are the spectacles that meet our 
eyes on every highway; such is the price paid for our convenience in the sufferings of our helpless servants. But in the mar¬ 
vellous progress of invention, an agent has been called into action which is probably destined to lighten this mass of suffering. 
This is the power of steam applied to land carriages, and producing the substitution of mechanical for animal power in the per¬ 
formance of the longest journeys. Up to the present time seventy-one railways, unequalled as monuments of public industry and 
opulence, have been formed, or are in progress, in Great Britain and Ireland. Of these vast roads, fifty-three are opened, and con¬ 
tinually employed in the conveyance of innumerable travellers ; eighteen are partially so, and ten are incomplete. They are com¬ 
puted to extend to more than 2000 miles, and, passing through the great lines of communication in the country, they must tend 
in an extraordinary degree to diminish all other methods of travelling. 
Not only has this system of public conveyance by coaches called forth a lighter and more agile race of horses, but it has 
acted in another way on the saddle-horses of the country. By altering the mode of performing journeys, it has diminished the 
inducement to cultivate particular kinds of horses. Few persons now make distant journeys on horseback, and are willing to 
travel at the rate of five miles an hour when they can be carried forward at the rate of ten or more. A horseman with his load 
of saddlebags is now almost as rare a sight as an elephant. A class of saddle-horses, accordingly, formerly used for journeys, 
has now almost disappeared. They were termed Road-Horses, and were suited to their employment. They were strong, useful, 
and safe, but had little or no breeding. Their paces were the walk and trot, and the canter and the gallop were nearly as much 
out of place with them as with the cart-horse. The Cob, too, a little squat horse fitted for drudgery, is with some difficulty 
to be procured. For the shorter journeys now in use, and for all the usual services of the equestrian, animals of lighter form 
and more easy paces are preferred, and few habitual riders are satisfied with horses that have not more or less of breeding. 
The old English Coach-Horse may be said to have disappeared, or rather to be used only for the heavier labours of draught. 
He was a large animal of the cart-horse form, usually black, denoting his affinity with the horses of Flanders, which long supplied 
England and other countries with this kind of horse. He was round-shouldered and heavy in his paces; but being generally trained 
in the manner of the manege, he had a high and prancing action. His pace was the slow trot, and rarely exceeded four or five 
miles in the hour. Some of these horses are still to be seen in the carriages of the nobility and older gentry of England ; but for 
* From twenty to thirty miles a-day, at the rate of four miles an hour, was the usual work of the few public coaches in England so late as the accession 
of George III. At that period, there was but one public coach from London to Edinburgh, which started once a-month, and occupied nearly three weeks in 
the journey. The other heavy coaches which set off from London performed in like manner slow journeys, in the manner of waggons, to distant parts of the 
kingdom. Now, more than 1000 well-equipped carriages, with relays of horses at short stages, start from the same great city every day, besides several hun¬ 
dreds which proceed to the towns, villages, and populous places around. 
