report.  But what means has he of knowing the speed of B?  If two horses gallop towards the winning-post locked together, it often happens that one wins by about six inches.  There is no real difference in their speed, but the winner happens to have a neck slightly longer than the other.  Observe that one race-horse—­Buccaneer—­has been known to cover a mile at the rate of fifty-four feet per second; it is therefore pretty certain that at his very highest speed he could move at sixty feet per second.  Very good; it happens then that a horse which wins a race by one foot is about one-sixtieth of a second faster, than the beaten animal.  What a dolt you must be to imagine that any man in the world could possibly tell you which of those two brutes was likely to be the winner!  It is the merest guess-work; you have all the chances against you and you might as well bet on the tossing of halfpence.  The bookmaker does not need to care, for he is safe whatever may win; but you are defying all the laws of chance; and, although you may make one lucky hit, you must fare ill in the end.”  But no commonsensical talk seems to have any effect on the insensate fellows who are the betting-man’s prey, and thus this precious sport has become a source of idleness, theft, and vast misery.  One wretch goes under, but the stock of human folly is unlimited, and the shoal of gudgeons moves steadily into the bookmaker’s net.  One betting-agent in France receives some five thousand letters and telegrams per day, and all this huge correspondence comes from persons who never take the trouble to see a race, but who are bitten with the gambler’s fever.  No warning suffices—­man after man goes headlong to ruin, and still the doomed host musters in club and tavern.  They lose all semblance of gentle humanity; they become mere blockheads—­for cupidity and stupidity are usually allied—­and they form a demoralizing leaven that is permeating the nation and sapping our manhood.

We have only to consider the position of the various dwarfs who bestride the racehorses in order to see how hard a hold this iniquity has on us.  A jockey is merely a stable-boy after all; yet a successful jockey receives more adulation than does the greatest of statesmen.  A theatrical manager has been known to prepare the royal box for the reception of one of these celebrities; some of the manikins earn five thousand a year, one of them has been known to make twenty thousand pounds in a year; and that same youth received three thousand pounds for riding in one race.  As to the flattery—­the detestable flattery—­which the mob bestows on good horsemen, it cannot be mentioned with patience.  In sum, then, a form of insanity has attacked England, and we shall pay bitterly for the fit.  The idle host who gather on the racecourse add nothing to the nation’s wealth; they are poisonous parasites whose influence destroys industry, honesty, and common manliness.  And yet the whole hapless crew, winners and losers, call themselves “sportsmen.”