The Express.
London, England, 1868-07-30 00:00:00

THE CAB STRIKE.

MOST people whose business or pleasure takes
them out this evening will have to hire private
conveyances, to ride in omnibuses, or to walk.
The placards with which our street cabs have been
adorned for the last few days bear their legitimate
fruit at 7 p.m., when, it is asserted, every rank will
be empty, and a majority of the proprietors and
men will be hurrying to Cumberland market, there
to discuss their grievances, and to propose a
remedy. The railway companies are the offenders
this time. Many of these have their own staff of
cabs, that is, cabs upon which the special privilege
of plyine for hire at the metropolitan termini is
conferred, and which bear the name of the railway
to which they are semi-officially attached. The
plea in favour of this course is that a better
class of vehicle is secured, and that the com-
pany have a partial guarantee for the
civility and proper behaviour of the drivers.
A " company's cab " is more or less under the
control of the railway authorities, and overcharge,
incivility, or other misbehaviour can be punished
by exclusion from the station and loss of the
ready custom the constant stream of arrivals
supplies. The companies which leave the matter
open are not, it is said, nearly so well
provided ; the least eligible cabs choosing to ply
where the " fare" must ride, and where the com-
petition is limited. A fee of one penny is
charged at the stations where the trade is
open, and this the cabman is willing
to pay in consideration of the certain
custom it ensures. Waterloo station is a fair
type of the one system; and Euston-square and
Paddington of the other. There are no cabs
bearing the inscription " South Western Railway "
and enjoying the special privileges the words
imply—whereas " Great Western" and " North
" Western" cabs are common enough. The im-
pression left on the minds of most travellers is
that the cab-hiring public are better served at
the two last stations than at the first, which has
the character of having the worst cabs in London
collected at it when trade is slack and of being
left destitute when it is brisk. This may be
due to its free-trade principles not being adopted
elsewhere. What the men now ask is that
the other railway-stations shall be placed on a
similar footing, and that they shall be allowed to
ply for hire as well as set down passengers at
every terminus in London. The demand seems
reasonable, but it is not certain that if acceded
to the public will be better served.

THE late Lord Bishop of Norwich, DE. SAMUEL
HINDS, has just published in the form of a
pamphlet a plea for the free discussion of religions
topics. The main body of the church, the laity,
do already, he says, vindicate their right to this
process of unlimited discussion whenever occasion
calls for it, but the case of the clergy is different.
Dr. HINDS does not say that a member of a
religious body, whether clerical or lay, who finds
himself hopelessly at variance on important
points with the tenets of that body, ought
not to quit it, but he contends that neither oral
declaration nor subscription can prevent subse-
quent dissent from some of the things promised and
subscribed, and that the expression of that dissent
ought not necessarily to be forbidden. No man,
be argues, can undertake to think always as he
does at any given time, or to believe always what
he believes. " The palpable absurdity of the
" undertaking annuls its obligation. Ho may
" as reasonably promise never to grow stouter
"or thinner." Judging from the decisions
which have been given for some years past, Dr.
HINDS is of opinion that it may not be visionary
to look forward to the time when appeals to
ecclesiastical courts, on the were of doctrine,
will altogether cease, and this, he believes, would
but result in bringing to bear on innovations
in doctrine the full force of that free discus-
sion which is the Church's constitutional weapon.
The supremacy of truth would be more fully
acknowledged, and belief be more real, and there-
fore more operative. Such is the leading argu-
ment of this latest clerical essay.