under the yoke, however grievous. He
understands now that nobody but a native can deal
successfully with the Doomanians. This ingenious
race of people have a way of their own in
managing business with their government. It
is very simple. They take as much money as
they can get, and do as little as they can.
When hard pressed, they bring things to a
wrangle, which may always last their lifetime
with a little adroit management. Instead of
giving caution-money themselves in the first
instance, they pay some bankrupt householder
to stand bail for them, and then obtain advances
of money upon promises which they never intend
to perform. Thus, one native gentleman made
three hundred thousand pounds by obtaining
advances over and over again on the same heap
of rubbish which he called his materials. His
device had all the effective simplicity of true
genius. He bribed the necessary local officials,
and then calmly had his rubbish wheeled in
barrows every night to a different quarter of
the town, and obtained an advance upon it
next morning. When he had by these means
obtained all the available funds at the disposal
of the local authorities, he declared himself
bankrupt, and retired into the country under efficient
Government protection and in general respect, to
enjoy his gains. Many a time did this worthy
watch Mr. Contractor and his friends with
amused wonder while they were trying to get
fair work for fair wages, knowing how hopeless
it would be; yet he and a score of other native
gentlemen would have accepted a similar
contract any day, and doubled their fortunes by it.

The fact is that the air of foreign countries
does not agree with English men of business,
and the less they have to do with them the
better. No trade is to be carried on profitably
abroad without a great deal of local knowledge,
an interminable maze of trick and intrigue
surrounding every detail connected with it.
The twice two are four doctrine altogether
breaks down, and the most exact and careful
calculations based on British facts invariably
prove faulty and deceptive. If a British
contractor endeavours to fall into the ways of
the natives and to act unscrupulously in his
own dealings, he fares worse than ever. Foreign
cheating requires a regular apprenticeship, and
is a craft which cannot be successfully followed
by a stranger. He will be allowed to try it in
order that hush money may be extorted from
him; but such demands soon become excessive,
and the moment his means fail to gratify the
rapacity of any one who has power to injure
him, he is exposed and ruined without mercy.
He will find himself, however honestly and
prudently he desires to act, a mark for constant
jealousy, extortion, and oppression under
some form or other. If he refuses to
employ natives in every post of confidence at
his disposal, they will try to injure him; and
if he does employ them, they will do him
still greater injury by their incapacity and
greediness.

It may be as well to lay the lesson here given
seriously to heart just now, when so many
foreign countries are bidding against each other
for British capital and energy. The best
possible advice that can be given to any one who
contemplates the acceptance of a foreign
contract is to renounce the idea at once, and
have nothing whatever to do with it.
Roumania, Hungary, Turkey, Russia, and the
South American States are always ready to
take our money and our work; but whatever
golden hopes they may hold out, it may be
accepted as a rule without exception, that they
will be found illusory on trial.

EXTRAORDINARY HORSE-DEALING

To eat, horse-flesh is the first duty of man.
To sing the praises of horse-flesh is incumbent
upon all. Such is the frame of mind into
which some of my friends are rapidly drifting.
They think horse, talk horse, dream
horse, and are pledged to believe in horse all
the days of their gastronomic life. Give them
a costly banquet, and they mentally compare
its component parts with horse; talk to them
of rare delicacies, and they at once refer you to
horse; speak to them of starvation and distress,
and their panacea is horse; in short, they have
actually done what that impulsive person,
Richard the Third, offered to do, and have given
up their kingdom (of thought and feeling) for
horse. The number of horses killed yearly in
England for feeding dogs and cats, the number,
again, of these which are suffering from no other
disease than old age, and the quantity of flesh-
meat which would be thrown upon the market,
if this horse-eating creed extends, are subjects to
which they give much labour and thought.

Ever since I dined with the twenty-one
philosophers who met in privacy to eat horse
systematically and scientifically for the first time
in England, I too have been looking up facts and
figures relating to its consumption. The made
dishes on that occasion were exquisitely good.
Since then, and with the sweet and pleasant
flavour of horse-flesh lingering on my palate, I
have sometimes wondered how much of it I
have eaten unconsciously in England and abroad.
Those amiable Paris restaurant-keepers, who
provide six courses and a pint of wine for a
couple of francs, are they unacquainted with
the succulent merits of horse? Is German
sausage free? Are polonies pure? Can à la
mode beef lay its hand upon its heart and say,
Avaunt! I know thee not? That horse-meat
is a common but unacknowledged, more or less,
article of food in England, just as it has been
for the last fifteen years more or less common
and acknowledged in Paris, Austria, Russia,
Prussia, Saxony, Belgium, Würtemberg,
Denmark, and the Hanse Towns. They say it
must be so, and ask, "Where else do the
horses go to? My hippophagical friends
assert it must be so. They say, where else do
the horses go to? Not all to the domestic
dogs and cats, to the wild beasts, or to the
hounds. The number killed in London alone
are, we are assured, more than can be accounted