GENERAL. 407 



the business was productive of benefit to any of 

 them, no man liking to knock under and take his 

 coach off the road. 



A person who was in the habit of keeping the 

 accounts of about thirteen coaches for the proprietors, 

 made, with some trouble, a calculation as to the 

 amount of duty paid in respect of each passenger in 

 the course of a year, and the result was, that if the 

 coach was always full, it would not exceed two 

 shillings and a penny a head on the fare of an inside 

 passenger for a hundred miles ; but if the calculation 

 was made upon the average number of passengers 

 travelling throughout the year, it would then come to 

 four shillings, and the sum paid for duty in the course 

 of the year was not less than thirteen per cent, on the 

 gross earnings. But he said he did not think that 

 the amount of duties could be a fair criterion of the 

 success of the coaching interest, because persons 

 would keep coaches going whether they gained or 

 lost. A strange system prevailed in the coaching 

 interest, by which persons would put on coaches 

 merely for the sake of putting them on, and often 

 an innkeeper with a good business connection would 

 put on a coach in order to keep others off. 



Referring to the subject of coaches being kept 

 on the road at a loss to the proprietors, a gentleman, 

 who was settling agent to several coaches, said : ' The 



