The Sun.
London, England, 1862-01-06 00:00:00

THE TURF.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
Sir, I will venture to say that no article, no review,
which has appeared in your columns for some years sur-
paFses in importance the strictures on the turf, as it is in
England, which I have just read in your paper of Jan. 1.
Horseraciug is one thing, the business of the turf is quito
another.

In reality, the system now pursued makes horses mere
animated dice, the race-course a gambling table, on which
the most unmitigated rascality is avowedly so generally
practised that the paying or not paying bets makes the rule
of professed honesty or rascality, without the smallest re-
ference to the circumstance under which the betting en-
gagement was made.
To go in for a good thing may mean coolly to overreach
your friend, your host—for all I know, your own father.
If you have purchased information on which you can take
in anybody in regard to any event to come off, I know no
one you are not by custom, or at least good precedent, con-

sidered justified in so robbing.
If a nobleman was found using loaded dice, manipulat-

ing a la Robin cards at whist or ecarte, so as to make his
adversaries in the games victims of his rascality, I believe
he would be turned out of any club in London—he
would have to retreat to Baden, and share with other
known rascals the spoils of open villany.
Who will venture to say the same code of honour applies
to the turf? From one year's end to the other the " book-
maker," if honest, has to watch those with whom he must
associate as detectives watch returned convicts out for a
walk. He will himself be watched by noblemen (?) gen-
tlemen (?) that they, having information he would scorn
to obtain, may get a bet on his books, which, so
far as anything human can be certain they know
to be, in plain language, as deliberate an act of dishonesty
as if they had tempted him to play for a cool fifty at ecarte
with cards themselves had marked, or at any game with
dice they knew to be doctored.
No man can keep race horses, evenwith an honest trainer,
and yet feel any reasonable assurance that his horses are
fairly dealt with from first to last. Light weights must ride,
in training and on the course; as the rule, light weights
are boys ; they live in an atmosphere in which they are
tutored to mistrust. The very excess of caution an honest
trainer must take to keep secret the powers of his horses,
their ailments, special merits, or special deficiencies, keeps
a boy's wits alive to the value of " information." He soon
finds a market for any he can obtain.
Stable-watching is a profession; we have improved upon
the old system of "the shepherd and his dog" accidentally
crossing the course during a private " trial." To get money
well laid on on some great event, it has been proved pos-
sible to have trials of horses of which the real owner has
never known anything.
From one year's end to the other there is an uninter-
rupted alliance, not disavowed, between men received in the
best society, having rank, position, &c., and a school o 3
scoundrels who are known to live by means of selling in•
formation which they obtain with about the same honesty
as that by which a pickpocket adopts your watch as his own.
If a nobleman or member of Parliament was fouud bribing
astable-boy to temporarily lame a hunter, that he might get
it from me at a low figure, I do not believe a single
" Hunt" would permit his appearance in the field ; and
yet, if I keep race-horses, and want to give them fair
play, to let the public take their character from their real
known value, I must keep a sort of pseudo-detective
on my premises, not to watch mere penniless scoun-
drels who wish to pick up anything saleable, but scoundrels
well salaried, agents of " confederate men" of my own class,
employed to tamper with my servants, that they may, per-
haps, even make myself their dupe—at all events, make my
property the means by which they go to the " Corner"
and deliberately cheat every man who books their bets.
Again, the public little know to whom the horses really
belong which run for many of the great events ;—but why
should I occupy space with comment upon the turf and its
consequences as it now exists ? Yes, it is an " institution,"
a part, they say, of England's social fabric. Let me add—
and who dares to contradict me ?—that year by year it is
getting more and more disreputable, its "business" falling
into the hands of men who make no secret of their utter
disregard of all the rules of honour. It is corrupting to
the very core many a young man on whose future life de-
pends the question of the utter ruin or preservation of
many a vast estate.
It is undermining all sense of honour in the class in whom,
under our constitution, it is most important to preserve it.
It is breeding up a race of boys and men in the training
stables to whom honesty must become an almost unknown
_luxury ; the wealth and multitude of the tempters make
their life one in which to be honest is to be miserable.
It is giving to the nation in return no one advantage that
can weigh for ono moment against the curse of a perennial
school of vice and deceit, promoted by men of rank and
wealth, simply, in the main, to afford a high gambling ex-
citement, free from any, the least, restraint in the way of
honourable rule.
Alas for the land in which noblemen and legislators are
linked to a pursuit which merges all distinction of rank or
character, levels the peer to the swindler,
the swindler's pays," raises him to the level of the peer
pjastEuwo RM.
and, tso long I s

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