33 2 History of Inland Transport 



The coach also paid, in the same period, 2537 73. 8d. for 

 tolls. 



Another coach proprietor, W. B. Thome, told the same Com- 

 mittee that on five coaches to Dover he paid for mileage duty 

 alone in the previous year a total of 2273. On his coaches to 

 Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham he paid 7017 in 

 the twelve months, and the total amount of duty he paid 

 for all his coaches in the year was ^26,717. He did not think, 

 however, that relief from taxation would save them from 

 being annihilated by the railways, except as regarded certain 

 roads where the railways did not directly operate against 

 them. 



Still another coach proprietor, Robert Gray, admitted 

 to the Committee that he did not think it would be possible 

 for the coaches to compete on the Bath road with the Great 

 Western Railway even if all the duty were taken off. 



There was no doubt that the coaches could not have held 

 their own permanently against the railways even if they had 

 been relieved of taxation as soon as the success of their rivals 

 became assured. On the other hand, if the coaches could have 

 been afforded such relief that, while not attempting to compete 

 with the railways on main routes where competition was 

 hopeless, they would have been encouraged to cater for 

 business on routes not then served by the railways, an ad- 

 vantage would have been gained, not only by the coach 

 proprietors themselves, but by the public. The early days 

 of the railway undoubtedly brought serious inconvenience to 

 people who found themselves set down at a station ten, 

 fifteen or twenty miles distant from their home, with no 

 chance of their getting a coach because rail competition and 

 Government taxation combined had made it no longer possible 

 to run a coach on that road. If the taxation had not, as was 

 often the case, made all the difference between profit and loss, 

 many of the coaches would probably have held on a few years 

 longer, by which time the railways would have been more 

 generally developed. As it was they were withdrawn in larger 

 numbers, at an earlier period, than would otherwise have been 

 the case, and there were many instances of great hardship 

 to travellers whose means did not allow of their supplementing 

 an incomplete railway journey by hiring a vehicle specially for 

 themselves. 



