The act passed by the provincial legislature of the colony of New Jersey in 1748 embraced very stringent regulations against dice, lotteries, etc., as well as horse racing. It is divided into several sections, and at Section 4 we reach the provision against racing as follows:
“And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid that after the publication of this Act, all horse racing, pacing or trotting of horses for lucre or gain, or for any sum or sums of money at any time (excepting such times as are hereafter expressly provided for and allowed by this Act), shall be and are hereby declared public nuisances, and shall be prosecuted as public nuisances, in manner hereinbefore directed. Provided always, and it is the true intent and meaning of this Act, that at all fairs that are or may be held within this province, and that on the first working day after the three grand festivals of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, etc., etc.”
These quotations are sufficiently extended to afford an unmistakable comparison, and on their face evidence that cannot be doubted for one moment that they both purport to be copied from the same act of the Jersey Colonial legislature. In the official printed copy which is before me as I write, the mandate is against “all horse racing, pacing or trotting of horses for lucre or gain.” In Mr. Euren’s “cutting” the mandate is against “all Norfolk pacing or trotting of horses for lucre or gain,” etc. The substitution of the word “Norfolk” instead of “horse racing,” is in the nature of a forgery, and I cannot believe that Mr. Euren would be guilty of any such execrable piece of trickery. It must have been conceived and written by some horse sharp who was trying to sell a Hackney to an American with a pocket full of money, and after he had effected his sale he could mutter quietly, when at a safe distance from his victim, the couplet from “Hudibras:”
“The paltry story is untrue
And forged to cheat such gulls as you.”
Unfortunately, however, for Mr. Euren, he indorsed the trick, and not only indorsed it, but sent it to the Commissioner of Agriculture with the hope and possible expectation that it would receive public recognition and become part of the horse history of this country. Did he not know that somebody would be nosing round among the old laws and expose the dirty deception? But, on the basis that Mr. Euren was deceived by this wretched interpolation of a fraud into the law, could he not see that the date of the law—1748—was before old Shales or Useful Cub was foaled, and long before the very first “Norfolk trotter” was ever heard of either in Norfolk or in any other part of England?
The exposure of this foolish attempt, wherever it originated, to incorporate into an old New Jersey statute a fiction, or a forgery, as it may be called, carries with it a punishment that should be felt by the most unscrupulous of horse sharps; but when we find it unequivocally indorsed and given to the world as true by the compiler of the Hackney Stud Book, it destroys all confidence in the accuracy and reliability of that work. This is a misfortune that the friends of the Hackney in England as well as in this country must feel as a blow at the value of the whole interest. Opinions may change with new light, and opposing conclusions may be honestly reached from different standpoints, but running against a fixed and certain date, as in this case, is like running against a two-edged sword.
In conclusion, the Hackney is merely the dear-bought and far-fetched fashion of the hour. A few years ago he was “something new in horses,” just as the modiste has “something new in dresses.” He was found in England, where there are no flies, without a tail, and as that was the fashion in England we must have horses in America without tails, notwithstanding the millions of torments they have to endure without the natural means of defense. As hack-a-bouts they are good horses, but their “churn-dasher” style of action will never become acceptable to the American people.
A few years since a quite persistent attempt, backed by unlimited wealth and all the prestige that metropolitan “fashion” and “society” could bestow, was made, particularly in New York, to create a Hackney “boom” in America. All that element in the social life of our great cities that affects a disdain for things distinctively American, and particularly for American horses, and that glories in the stultifying habit of aping things “English, ye know,” took up the Hackney fad with unbounded enthusiasm. As a park and road horse the American horse—the incomparable trotting-bred driver—was to be incontinently crowded out of the driveways, the markets and the shows. The National Horse Show Association, whose annual show at Madison Square Garden is the great social fête of the year in New York, lent all its powerful influence to forward the Hackney “boom,” which was, it must in fairness be said, consistent; for the miscalled National Horse Show has always catered more to foreign horses and foreign customs in horsemanship than to American horses and horsemen. Men of great wealth and prominence established extensive Hackney studs, imported famous prize-winning stallions and mares, and there was only one thing left to be done, and that was to convert the American people to the belief that the driving horse they had been breeding and developing with a special purpose and care—the fleetest and most versatile harness horse in the world—was inferior to an imported nondescript. In that attempt the Hackney advocates have failed in America as completely as did Mr. Blunt and others in England, when they sought to make racing men believe that the Arab was a better race horse than the English thoroughbred.