ssed the regular feeding and training of the inmates,
without producing any practical good.

A STAGE-COACH HORSE imputed their want of condition to the misconduct
of their leaders, who, he said, could never be kept in the right path,
or made to do one-half of the work which properly belonged to them. By
a strange fatality, they were generally purblind, and always shyed
most fearfully when an Opposition coach approached them. Indeed, it
was well known that the horses selected for these duties were,
generally speaking, vicious and unsound, and not taken from the most
able and powerful, but from the most showy classes. He then proceeded
to descant upon the general wrongs of horses. He congratulated the
community upon the abolition of bearing reins, those grievous burdens
upon the necks of all free-going horses; and he trusted the time would
soon arrive when the blinkers would also be taken off, every corn-binn
thrown open, and every horse his own leader.

Several other delegates addressed the meeting, and various plans were
discussed; but it invariably turned out, upon investigation, that the
change would only benefit the class of animals by whom it was
proposed. A post-horse was of opinion, that the true remedy lay in
decreasing the amount of speed, and shortening the spaces between
milestones. A Welsh pony was for the abolition of tolls, which, he
said, exhausted the money intended for repairs; whilst some
plough-horses from Lincolnshire proposed the encouragement of pasture
land, the abolition of tillage, and the disuse of oats altogether. The
harmony of the meeting was, at one period, interrupted, by the
unfortunate use of the word "_blackguard_" by a delegate from the
collieries, which caused a magnificent charger from the Royal Horse
Guards, Blue, to rear up, and, with great indignation, demand if the
allusion was personal; but who was satisfied with the explanation of
the president, that it was applicable only in a warlike sense. A long,
lean, bay horse, with a sour head, demanded a similar explanation of
the word "_job_," and was told it was used in a _working_ sense.
Several resolutions, drawn by two dray-horses, embodying the supposed
grievances of the community, were finally agreed upon, and a petition,
under the hoof of the president, founded upon them, having been
prepared, and ordered to be presented to the House of Commons by the
members for Horsham, the meeting separated, and the delegates returned
to the