action that bordered the least on meanness, fraud, or dishonesty.

That the Prince of Wales, on attaching himself to the sports of the turf, should have rendered himself liable to these imputations, was a consequence natural to be expected from the equality that necessarily prevails on such occasions. Losers could no more conceal their chagrin when a prince was the winner, than they could when they paid their money to an equal; and they well knew that his royal highness was as liable to be deceived and imposed upon by his grooms, trainers, jockies, and dependants, as any other gentleman of the turf, and therefore, whenever the royal horses did not perform according to their satisfaction, either by winning when they had an extraordinary opinion of their fleetness, or by losing when they thought they would prove de

ficient in spirit and speed, the result was the same-they attributed their disappointment not to any accidental circumstances, over which the Prince of Wales or his servants could not possibly have any controul, but to some unfair manœuvres on the part of the Prince and his dependant for the purpose of misleading the public judgment.

The ostensible sums for which racehorses run form but a very small proportion of the sum total that is depending upon the event of any match of notoriety. The bulk of the money

that is hazarded upon such occasions is in the shape of bets; and it has been known, in some cases of great expectation, that so large a sum as one hundred thousand pounds has been actually depending upon the result of a single match. Hence it happens, that the proprietors of the horses are far from being the only persons interested in

the decision of the contest, but ʼn multitude of other persons, as much under the influence of hope or fear as themselves, share with them the anxieties

of the race. It is not, therefore, when a race is decided, that a question that concerns the interests of two or three, or half a dozen, or more individuals is determined, but there is a countless multitude of other individuals, who having hazarded sums on the event of the race, if they find their expectations disappointed, conceive themselves at liberty to cry out that one party or the other has played booty, and that the race has been sold. This is, in plain words, charging some quarter, either the master or the servants, with fraud, and, however the phrase may be softened either by cant or technical terms, the meaning is substantially the samelet us express it in the most qualified English, that one party or the

other have proved themselves cheats. In the common transactions of life, in mercantile speculations, for example, this is so serious an imputation, that scarcely any one dare venture to hazard it, and never without very strong grounds; but, in the sporting world, the case is far different. Sportsmen form a community of themselves (like the frequenters of the Stock Exchange), and are governed by a code of laws different from those in usage among ordinary men. Their contracts are contracts of honour; very few of them are cognizable in our courts of justice, because it has been the policy of the legislature to discountenance every sort of gaming speculation, except that on which it bestows its annual protection (lotteries), and to prevent gambling questions from being agitated in our courts of law, and thereby deriving encouragement from the rigid

administration of justice, which so eminently distinguishes the public tribunals of the kingdom

Under these disadvantages, it became necessary for the gentlemen of the turf to institute a court of their own, which, observing some of the formalities of the ordinary courts, as the solemnity of an oath, in the examination of witnesses, should decide upon the disputes that might arise among them, and their decision, in matters of this kind, was to be regarded as final. Of this nature was the Jockey Club. The decisions of this body were confidently appealed to by all who thought themselves aggrieved by any sporting transactions, and the fiats of the club were regarded as standard authority by all who were engaged in any pursuits within purview of its cognizance.

The nature of this institution has

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