1831.] C 231 ] 



COACHES, CABS, ATSTD OMNIBUSES. 



The indignation of an injured people, too long driven against their 

 wills, and what aggravates the injury, forced to pay for being so driven, 

 has at length risen to a conflux — and hackney-coaches must be new 

 horsed, new lined, and new painted, " or the patience of a suffering 

 nation will explode," and Heaven alone knows what will be the conse- 

 quence. The Cabinet have promised a reform in the vehicular adminis- 

 tration, and a general four-footed and four-wheeled change is at this 

 moment organizing in an attic of the Home Department. We shall 

 give all our assistance to this great reform ; in the meantime we are 

 told that — 



" A bill has been brought in to alter and amend the Hackney Coach Laws — 

 not before it was wanted. The absurditj^ of ' no half-crown fare,' and the mon- 

 strous nonsense of allowing a Jarvey to plunder his inexperienced customer of 

 two shillings for driving him a quarter of a mile off the stones, after sunset, under 

 the name of ' back carriage,' we expect will now be done away. The middle 

 classes (though Mr. Twiss would perhaps deny that they can understand the 

 merits of the case) have long considered these to be great nuisances." 



However, this much must be said for the hackney-coaches that, bad as 

 they are, they are much better than the cabs, which are to the full as 

 dirty, and a hundred times more dangerotis. The coach trade is a poor 

 one, and the outfits are so heavy that no profit is made unless the coach 

 takes fifteen shillings a day, while its gains are often not half the money. 

 But why not establish omnibuses in the streets, and thus get rid of the 

 whole crazy system at once } The French have omnibuses running 

 through the streets of Paris, to the great convenience of the public. Why 

 have we not the same here ? In London they are confined to the City- 

 road, and the line from Piccadilly to the Mansion-house (and in that line 

 they can take nothing but the fare for the whole), not the five-hundredth 

 part of the conveyance that the people want every day. There was 

 some promise by ]Mr. Goulburn of a Bill on the subject, and now the 

 whole sinks into a mere change in licencing, which adds to the burthens 

 of the coach-owner, and he is poor enough already, without adding in 

 the slightest degree to the convenience of the public. The breaking up 

 of the Hackney Coach Board will be rather an inconvenience than a 

 good, for the commissioners were gentlemen, and they treated the com- 

 plainants before thein with attention and civility. We suppose that the 

 complaints must now be carried to Bow-street, that brilliant seminary 

 where Sir Richard Birnie, one of the most renowned of human vulga- 

 rians, a person whose law we must suppose equal to his chances for 

 acquiring knowledge of any kind, is the grand professor of courtesy 

 and jurisprudence. 



What if we have dearer licences, there is no great improvement in 

 the increase of a tax. Or if these licences generate more cabriolets, 

 what is this but to midtiply broken bones > The plain fact is, that the 

 whole system of street-vehicles must be changed. The hackney-coach 

 is too expensive to its owner, to be given at a rate cheap enough for the 

 people. It, therefore, becomes a crazy and a filthy vehicle, with the 

 harness rotten, the horses starved,. and the coachman drunk, insolent, 

 and a thief. The cabs are cheap by comparison, but cheating goes on 

 there too in abundance, and the cab is, after all, not much safer than a 



