an

regret to say, no uncommon case; that it is practised extensively, the most ordinary experience will declare; and the extent or frequency of its operation arises from the facility of perpetration, and unhappy leniency with which such operations are regarded. But whether such practices can be said to have grown out of our turf system, or to be only incidental to the love of money connected with all gambling, may be a question. We incline to the latter opinion.

Amongst those circumstances which are universally admitted to exercise a demoralizing influence upon the turf, there is hardly one so palpable as P.P. betting. The simple interpretation of these mysterious characters is 'Play or Pay:' and the meaning of the term is an engagement to pay bets made on a horse, whether he come to the post or not. This system of betting has been as much discouraged as possible; and, in point of fact, the inconveniences have been so great that there remain only a few great races in which it now obtains: these are the Derby and St. Leger, the the Oaks, the Two Thousand Guineas and One Thousand Guineas, the Cesarewitch, and Cambridgeshire, the Ascot, Goodwood, and Doncaster Cups, and certain handicaps with two forfeits; and such is the feeling on the subject of these bets, that the committee of Tattersall's decline to recognize P.P. betting in any other races.

The

evils to which this part of the system tends are obvious: to the encouragement of backing horses at very long odds, and the increase of speculation; and, through this, to the acquisition of information by means and channels the most unworthy. It may be easily understood that where a number of months, or even weeks, intervene between the making of the bet and the event of the race, numberless opportunities must occur of trickery and dishonesty, and above all, of obtaining a knowledge of private stables, which has a directly demoralizing tendency. No man under these circumstances is safe;

temptations of every kind are held out to those from whom information can be obtained; grooms, jockeys, and stable boys, are tampered with: they are surrounded with luxury and debauchery; and the whole machinery of 'touting' is set in motion. Men may live in an atmosphere of infection and yet come forth safe and sound. But this is the exception and not the rule; and when we consider the social condition of those upon whom these temptations are practised, our sympathy, more than our indignation, should be awakened for those who fall. The reflection is a melancholy one, that few men are above resorting to improper means for obtaining information; and some, who would shrink from the suspicion of reading an opened letter not intended for their perusal, do not hesitate to sacrifice an inferior to their avarice or ambition.

Seeing, therefore, the evils consequent upon this system of betting, and recognizing it as a part of our turf morality, the higher and more honourable classes of the patrons of racing have set their faces strenuously against it. It enables men, however, to get much longer odds against the horses they are inclined to back; and the chances against ever coming to the post at all, coming in anything like his present form, or the thousand and one accidents to which horseflesh is liable, hold out prospects which are sure to raise up advocates for its continuance. It would be dishonest to pass over in silence what we believe to be so detrimental to the turf; and we must condemn it, with a very great majority of racing men, as one of the worst features of our turf system.

We are reminded here, by the illegitimate acquisition of information, of another question which is closely connected with it: the liberty of scratching,' or withdrawing a horse, upon the ground of having been 'forestalled' in the

market.

It sometimes happens that a stable secret oozes out in a manner incomprehensible to owner, trainer, and groom. Intelligence

of a private trial, with all circumstances connected with it, is forwarded to a confederate; and when the owner, acting upon his honestlyacquired knowledge of his horse's capability, proceeds to back him, he finds himself' forestalled.' In other words, he is unable to do so at a remunerative price. Here again we have to consider the race-horse as a simple means of getting money. It is not rare, upon such occasions, to decline running the horse unless the owner can get such odds as shall appear to him to be a fair price, according to his public running or reputation. If he gets this, he has clearly forced the public to his own terms, and is bound to run his horse; if he does not, the consequence is the withdrawal of the horse, and the inevitable grief of those who have acted upon the surreptitiously-obtained

informa

tion. A man has a right to do what he will with his own-save what is wrong; and although the position is vexatious, we do not think retaliation on the part of a gentleman is justifiable. Two wrongs cannot make one right. We place the case as simply as possible before the public, and we leave them to settle a question, with at least two sides to it. It is quite certain that one of the proudest and most honourable men in England, and one who was most honestly zealous for the integrity of the turf, did not hesitate openly to declare his determination not to start the favourite for the St. Leger unless his terms were complied with. His terms were complied with, and he won.

As we approach the limits of our article, we stumble upon by far the most important item in the list of turf questions: we mean 'Handicapping.' When our few racing establishments consisted but of a small number of horses, the idea of bringing good and bad together in the same race never occurred to the patrons of sport. The notion of making a moderate animal as good as a Derby horse, by an adjustment of weight, demanded the refinement of modern times, and

the commercial genius of the modern system. It was not long, however, before it became manifest that all the prizes of the turf were at the mercy of two or three of the best; that something must be done to prevent a perfect monopoly, and find a use for second and third class horses. The first attempt to correct this defect was a selling race, by which the winner was to be sold for a certain sum of money; a mode by which superior horses were debarred from competition. But as

the horse could only be claimed by some one running in the same race, and the owner of the second horse had the priority of claim, it is easy to see that an opening was left for any amount of private arrangement between the parties concerned; and it would be a waste of time to go further with this part of our question. Handicapping is a method of arranging the weights of horses, not according to their years, but according to their public running; and has superseded every other means of bringing together horses of very different qualifications. The highest accepting weight being raised to 8st. 12lbs., or 8st. 7lbs., according to circumstances, the minor weights are supposed to follow according to the capabilities of the horses. The object, therefore, of the owner will be to throw dust in the eyes of the handicapper, to make his horse appear infinitely worse than he really is; and it is a remarkable fact that (perhaps with the exception of Asteroid and one or two others) no horse has won a valuable handicap excepting under weights much below his real capability.

Now there are two methods by which the handicapper is to be deceived. The most obvious one is, in these days, dangerous, as being easy of detection, and visited with condign punishment. An order to pull a horse back, i.e., to rope' him, or, as in a late suspicious case it was expressed, to 'put the strings on,' is seldom resorted to: at all events, it is not the everyday occurrence which the wholesale condemners of the turf are in the habit

of representing it to be. This would probably not answer the purpose of blinding the handicapper, but would open the eyes of the world in a manner unpleasantly marked towards the individual who attempted it. The more ordinary, and by far the safer method of proceeding is this: to run your horse out of condition; to run him at a time when, from whatever circumstance, he is quite incapable of winning. Knowing your horse, and yourself, of course you will not have backed him for one shilling; on the contrary, if thoroughly regardless of your character, you may have safely laid against him. This is done daily, horresco referens, and it is repeated consistently with the same horse, until the private friends of the owner are told that this is his day,'' this is his journey.' Need we say that upon this understanding the money is heaped on, a good jockey is put up with a sufficiently broad hint as to the fact, and that brute' which has been beaten in half a dozen handicaps when he was not backed, and by repeated failure has reduced his weight to the minimum, and the odds against him to the largest on record, canters in a winner with any number of pounds in hand. We need hardly say that the racing world, and, above all, the handicapper, is taken by surprise: his surprise is accompanied by intelligence which comes, however, too late to be of any earthly service to the turf. When horses ran only for the stakes, or when betting was confined to the owners of horses, no fairer method of equalizing their powers could be conceived than the handicap-always supposing it to be in the hands of an honest and intelligent man; but the moment 'betting assumed the form it now enjoys, and a race-horse becomes a mere thing to make money of, there can scarcely be imagined a more fallacious test. We have two prominent characteristics to secure in a handicapper. He must be perfectly cognizant of the horses engaged, and he must be perfectly disinterested in the result of the race. The most competent man in

England, however, cannot guard against the vigorous attempts to deceive him: he cannot be everywhere, or know everything, especially when the great object is to keep him in the dark. The public performances by which he is to be guided may or may not be a criterion; and what with pulling, bad starting, inferior jockeyship, and diversity of condition, a handicapper, like a huntsman, ought to be heaven-born. We are satisfied that nothing can be fairer than the handicapping generally, as far as circumstances permit: there is seldom anything to complain of on that score. It will happen occasionally that very extraordinary mistakes are made by men whose interest is too strong for their principles: in such cases we recommend the stewards of races to insist upon, and to exercise, a right of control; and when the handicapper is a lessee of a course, as he sometimes is, the lessor should endeavour to make it his interest to deal honestly by the horses committed to his care. If this be not done, we must not be surprised that stakes and bets should become a sort of family heir-loom, as is said to have been the case at least at one of our most popular meetings. As to a paid public handicapper, which has been so often recommended, we see no means of increasing his knowledge or making him less amenable to the tricks of the turf; and unless it were made a sine quâ non that he should be ignorant of the ownership, that he should have neither friends nor relatives connected with horse-racing-in fact, that he should know nothing of the things most certain to come within the range of his business, we do not see how we should make him less interested than other people. For certain situations of responsibility in this world we must trust to the innate honour and sense of right characteristic of the gentleman, and, we hope, of the man; and we do not take so despairing a view of turf matters as not to know that there are many such among the patrons of the race-course. It seems clear

that handicaps are not necessarily wrong, excepting in the hands of dishonest men. In the integrity of the turf, when men raced for the stakes alone, no advantage could have accrued by concealing or denying the natural powers of a horse; and we must regard the corruptions which spring from this system as belonging to the betting element. We will turn now to a fault from which it appears to be inseparable.

Handicapping tends to increase the number of race-horses at the expense of their quality. It is true that there are horses on the turf so widely different that no weights could bring them together. The generality, however, of inferior horses are made valuable by this system; and a very moderate, or even bad animal may find himself in excellent company upon pretty equal terms. This gives a premium for the continued breeding of inferior horses; and so long as a horse can gallop a certain pace the chance of winning something is not hopeless. By handicapping, a bad horse thus becomes a good one. It is thus, too, a temptation to gambling; and few idle or speculative men are so poor but that they can afford to buy at a low price an animal which may win them a good stake by being almost turned loose in a handicap. This is an inquiry entirely for the turf, apart from all trickery, and seriously detrimental to the breed of horses in England. It might, to a certain extent, be remedied by raising the weights much higher than they now are, by approximating them to the days when four-year-olds carried 10st. 4lbs., five-year-olds 11st. 6lbs., sixyear-olds 12st., and aged 12st. 2lbs., or by making the marginal difference much less than it now is. But if the weights are to remain at their present value, we see no means of exclusion, but rather incline to the opinion that the evil must increase. If it could be shown, against all analogy, that short distances and light weights and juvenility were calculated to improve our horses, or to keep them even before the public

to a more advanced age, we might put up with an inconvenience; but the reverse is the case. Very few horses remain on the turf after four or five years old: at the supposed date of their vigour they are worn out, and an attenuated and unsound progeny is the result. In six letters published in the Morning Post in 1854, the following statistics are given:- Taking,' says the writer, 'the winners of the July Stakes at Newmarket for ten years in succession-two of these winners left off running at three years old, five at four years old, two at five years old, and but one continued to run till eight years old. But of these ten winners only one ever achieved a race of four miles.' Further than this it is difficult to go; and, keeping in sight the original intention of the turf, we do not think its present system adequate to the performance of its promise. Raise the weights, then, and increase the distance: you will have fewer, but more valuable and honester runners, and you will save your handicappers from the melancholy suspicion that the second or third horse in a handicap is usually inferior to those which are behind him, but whose day is not yet come. There are plenty of honest men on the turf who are as anxious as we are for its reform: but there is a heavy leaven of betting and commerce which keeps them down.

We have endeavoured in this sketch of the main corruptions of our turf system not to 'extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.' The violent hostility of its opponents does harm. Englishmen have a natural attachment to horseflesh, and a wholesome pride in the excellence of their cavalry and the beauty of their equipages, which pleads for anything whose object is their promotion. Without saddling the race-course with the adventitious vices of some of its most dishonourable followers, it is obvious that it has sufficient internal deformities of its own. With certain predilections for the manly and honest part of it, we have yet to admit the really worst feature of

the whole. This is its tendency to demoralize. There are dishonest practices in every profession. But there is scarcely any occupation which tends so to destroy highmindedness as a professional attendance upon the turf, by callous indifference or shamelessness in petty deceit. We regard this as by far its most dangerous characteristic. The wholesale robbery and violence, the low swindling and universal dissipation of which ignorance or prejudice accuse it, have no existence at all deducible from it. It is a hardness and disregard of detection in small meannesses which is its bane. The temptations it holds out are in themselves great, and the years at which, in some instances, they have to be encountered, are tender. The jockey, whom his lightness of weight and cleverness as a horseman have brought into a racing stable, is too young and unstable to resist; and is unfortunately led to believe that much which is unfair in ordinary life is only clever and knowing on the race-course. The boy, who can scarcely write his own name, is taught to be as silent and mysterious as if the secrets of an European congress were on his shoulders, and he soon becomes as

deceitful and as suspicious of others as the most brilliant diplomatist. It is difficult to make him understand that honesty is the best policy, because honesty to his employer usually implies mystification to the rest of the world.

The remedy of such evils as these is almost beyond human power, because they depend upon a chain of circumstances which neither an Argus could see nor a Briareus comprehend. We must regard the turf much as we regard certain trades detrimental to human life-entered upon with some risk and precaution, but so necessary as to debar them from extinction. For the redress of palpable grievances we look to the Jockey Club, which contains the names of men whose whole lives are a commentary upon the sentiments and conduct of English gentlemen. That tribunal requires all the support the public can give it; and it is well that its members should be above suspicion. For, whatever the state of the turf, whatever its corruptions and backslidings, should it once lose the support of the nobility and gentry of the country, it is impossible to predict the extent of corruption and immorality into which it must fall.