where did the phrase beat a dead horse come from
Flogging a dead horse However Jay Dillon[3] has discovered an earlier instance attributed to the same John Bright thirteen years earlier: speaking in Commons 28 March 1859, Lord Elcho (Francis Charteris, 10th Earl of Wemyss) remarked that Bright had not been "satisfied with the results of his winter campaign" and that "a saying was attributed to him [Bright] that he [had] found he was 'flogging a dead horse.'"[4]