A STAGE-COACH HORSE imputed their want of condition to the misconduct of their leaders, who, he said, could never be kept in the right path, or made to do one-half of the work which properly belonged to them.  By a strange fatality, they were generally purblind, and always shyed most fearfully when an Opposition coach approached them.  Indeed, it was well known that the horses selected for these duties were, generally speaking, vicious and unsound, and not taken from the most able and powerful, but from the most showy classes.  He then proceeded to descant upon the general wrongs of horses.  He congratulated the community upon the abolition of bearing reins, those grievous burdens upon the necks of all free-going horses; and he trusted the time would soon arrive when the blinkers would also be taken off, every corn-binn thrown open, and every horse his own leader.

Several other delegates addressed the meeting, and various plans were discussed; but it invariably turned out, upon investigation, that the change would only benefit the class of animals by whom it was proposed.  A post-horse was of opinion, that the true remedy lay in decreasing the amount of speed, and shortening the spaces between milestones.  A Welsh pony was for the abolition of tolls, which, he said, exhausted the money intended for repairs; whilst some plough-horses from Lincolnshire proposed the encouragement of pasture land, the abolition of tillage, and the disuse of oats altogether.  The harmony of the meeting was, at one period, interrupted, by the unfortunate use of the word “blackguard” by a delegate from the collieries, which caused a magnificent charger from the Royal Horse Guards, Blue, to rear up, and, with great indignation, demand if the allusion was personal; but who was satisfied with the explanation of the president, that it was applicable only in a warlike sense.  A long, lean, bay horse, with a sour head, demanded a similar explanation of the word “job,” and was told it was used in a working sense.  Several resolutions, drawn by two dray-horses, embodying the supposed grievances of the community, were finally agreed upon, and a petition, under the hoof of the president, founded upon them, having been prepared, and ordered to be presented to the House of Commons by the members for Horsham, the meeting separated, and the delegates returned to their respective stables.

* * * * *

THE PROCLAMATION.

      Bold warriors of Erin, I hereby proclaim,
      That the world never witness’d your rivals in fame;
      Bold sons of Macmurraugh, Macarthy, O’Neill,
      The armies of earth at your sight would turn pale. 
      A flash from your eyes would light England’s last pile,
      And a touch give her sceptre to Erin’s green isle.