Experience affords ample demonstration, that the tempers of HORSES are as much diversified as the tempers of those who RIDE or DRIVE them; and it will not be inapplicable for the young to be told, or the OLD to recollect, that a great number of horses are made restive and vicious by ill usage, and then unmercifully whipped, spurred, and beaten for being so; in corroboration of which fact, there are numbers constantly disposed of "to the best bidder," as invincibly restive, at the hammer of a REPOSITORY, that would in a few weeks, by gentle and humane treatment, have been reformed to the best tempers, and most pliable dispositions. Those who have been most attentively accurate in observation and experience, well know, that personal severity to horses for restiveness or starting, very frequently makes them worse, but is seldom found to make them better: it is, therefore, certainly more rational, more humane, and evidently more gratifying, to effect subservience by tenderness and manly perseverance (divested of pusillanimity and fear) than by means of unnatural severity, often tending to render "the remedy worse than the disease."
Horses, when at liberty, and in a state of freedom, although they are exposed to the different degrees of heat and cold, (encountering the utmost severity of the ELEMENTS in opposite seasons,) are well known to be in more constant health, and less subject to morbidity, than when destined to the scanty confines of a STABLE, and brought into USE; the causes of which are too numerous, and too extensive, to come within the limits of a work of this kind. It is, however, to be presumed, very many of the SEVERE, DANGEROUS, and, finally, destructive disorders to which they are so constantly subject, and so perpetually liable, are produced much more by a want of care and attention in those who OWN or superintend them, than to any pre-disposing tendency in the animal to disease. In farther elucidation of which, see "Groom."
The disorders to which horses are perpetually incident, may be reduced to a few distinct heads, as the acute, chronic, dangerous, infectious, and accidental; the major part of those partaking of a joint description, and technical complication. For instance, staggers, flatulent or inflammatory cholic, fevers, pleurisy, inflammation of the lungs, and strangury, may be ranked amongst the acute and dangerous. Glanders and FARCY are admitted to be infectious, and in advanced stages, incurable. The GREASE, SURFEIT, MANGE, ASTHMA, &c. may be termed chronic. Accidents and incidents include colds, coughs, swelled legs, cracked heels, wind-galls, strains, warbles, sitfasts, and a long train of trifles, by far the greater part of which originate in carelessness, inhumanity, and indiscretion. A description of all will be found under their distinct heads; and the means of alleviation and cure must be derived from the most popular practitioners, or the works of those who have written professedly upon the subject of Veterinary Medicine and Disease.
Horses having for so many centuries continued to increase the ease, comfort, pleasure, and happiness, of all descriptions of people, they have at length, by the fertile invention of national financiers, been found equally capable of becoming materially instrumental to the support of Government, in a degree beyond what the utmost effusions of fancy could have formed, as will be seen by the very judicious scale of gradational taxation, accurately copied and annexed. And as there was no other distinct head, where the DUTIES upon CARRIAGES could with propriety be introduced, they are here included also, as no inapplicable addition to requisite information, in which so many are individually concerned.
Duties on Horses.
| Duties on Horses for riding, or drawing Carriages. | ||||||
| No. | At per horse. | Total per Year | ||||
| £. | s. | d. | £. | s. | d. | |
| 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 | 3 | 6 | 0 | 6 | 12 | 0 |
| 3 | 3 | 12 | 0 | 10 | 16 | 0 |
| 4 | 3 | 15 | 0 | 15 | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | 3 | 16 | 0 | 19 | 0 | 0 |
| 6 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 24 | 0 | 0 |
| 7 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 28 | 7 | 0 |
| 8 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 32 | 8 | 0 |
| 9 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 36 | 13 | 6 |
| 10 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 41 | 0 | 0 |
| 11 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 45 | 2 | 0 |
| 12 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 49 | 4 | 0 |
| 13 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 53 | 12 | 6 |
| 14 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 57 | 15 | 0 |
| 15 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 61 | 17 | 0 |
| 16 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 66 | 0 | 0 |
| 17 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 70 | 11 | 0 |
| 18 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 75 | 3 | 0 |
| 19 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 79 | 16 | 0 |
| 20 | 4 | 5 | 0 | 85 | 0 | 0 |
| And so on for any Number. | ||||||
On Horses and Mules.
| Duties on other Horses, and on Mules. | ||||||
| No. | At per horse | Total per Year | ||||
| £. | s. | d. | £. | s. | d. | |
| 1 | 0 | 12 | 6 | 0 | 12 | 6 |
| 2 | 1 | 5 | 0 | |||
| 3 | 1 | 17 | 6 | |||
| 4 | 2 | 10 | 0 | |||
| 5 | 3 | 2 | 6 | |||
| 6 | 3 | 15 | 0 | |||
| 7 | 4 | 7 | 6 | |||
| 8 | 5 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 9 | 5 | 12 | 6 | |||
| 10 | 6 | 5 | 0 | |||
| 11 | 6 | 17 | 6 | |||
| 12 | 7 | 10 | 0 | |||
| 13 | 8 | 2 | 6 | |||
| 14 | 8 | 15 | 0 | |||
| 15 | 9 | 7 | 6 | |||
| 16 | 10 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 17 | 10 | 12 | 6 | |||
| 18 | 11 | 5 | 0 | |||
| 19 | 11 | 17 | 6 | |||
| 20 | 12 | 10 | 0 | |||
| And so on for any Number. | ||||||
Duties on Carriages.
| Duties on Carriages with four Wheels, for private Use. | ||||||
| No. | At per Carriage. | Total per Year. | ||||
| £. | s. | d. | £. | s. | d. | |
| 1 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 22 | 0 | 0 |
| 3 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 36 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | 12 | 10 | 0 | 50 | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | 13 | 0 | 0 | 65 | 0 | 0 |
| 6 | 13 | 10 | 0 | 81 | 0 | 0 |
| 7 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 98 | 0 | 0 |
| 8 | 14 | 10 | 0 | 116 | 0 | 0 |
| 9 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 135 | 0 | 0 |
| And so on for any Number. | ||||||