The Sun.
London, England, 1853-07-27 00:00:00

LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 1853.

A climax has been put this day to that most
intolerable and detestable of all the petty social
evils endured by the Londoner—the Cab Nui-
sance. It now remains fur us to witness some
really stringent interfere Ace on the part of her
MAJESTY'S Government. Direct interposition has
at length become imperatively requisite—for the
public patience has at last, we are bold to assert,
been entirely exhausted. Hitherto, our long-suf-
fering has been something more than exemplary.
It has rendered us ridiculous at least, if not ab-
solutely contemptible, in the eyes of our neigh-
bours, the Parisians. We appeal to the common
sense of any one who has ever enjoyed an excur-
sion to the metropolis of our Gallic contemporaries.
We ask any sane man who has ever visited that
beautiful and orderly city of Paris where Jehus are
not necessarily, besides being hackdrivers, purveyors
of insolence and organised batteners on extortion !
We put it to any rational member of society, who
may have rejoiced in the delight of a trip from
London to Paris, whether the contrast presented
between the two capitals in reference to the
management of the public vehicles plying through
the streets at all hours for the convenience of the
population, has not appeared to them to reflect
the utmost disgrace upon ourselves, while it re-
dounds to the credit at once of the propriety, the
honesty, and the decency of our somewhat more
civilised. friends across the Channel. We are not
hair-splitting in thus marking out with exacti-
tude the balance of this really melancholy corn-
parisor. The truth is altogether in this matter
notorious. Everybody can testify as much
who has ever strolled under the urban umbrage
of the Boulevards. Here again, as in so many
other directions, do we find reason to repeat with
a " damnable iteration," the hackneyed admission
of
bette parrson u
STERNE, that they manage these things
France. Bet ter ! Why, in simple
i
candour, it must be allowed that between the cab
and the
fiacre there is absolutely no room what-
ever for comparison.

A cab in London has hitherto been, in the vast
majority of instances, nothing more nor less than a
ricketty tub upon wheels, with cracked. window-
panes and threadbare cushions, sometimes not
wholly innocent of th 3 depredations of vermin,
for, the privilege of riding in which at the tail
of a miserable specimen of horseflesh (literally,
fast going to the dogs) you had either
to pay exorbitantly, or to submit to the abuse of
a driver powerful in the choicest vocabulary of
Billingsgate. A pleasant alternative ! You had
to put
up with a coachman often in liquor, and
almost always out at elbows. You had to 101 l
upon seats redolent of stables and tobacco—occa-
sionally losing a train while Master JEHLT
was giving a friend
doubt, a lift," very- convenient
no
to him,but,, rather the reverse
to yourself, seeing that it necessitated what Mr.
S:dcK, of Slickville, 'would call
circumbendibus." All these deleetaahle‘ tcaorrin
caotmi oin_
tants you had to tolerate if you ventured Upon
calling one of those -tumble-down convey %on
drawn by a " galled jade," redeemed ance-Tfrom the
'iands of the knacker, driven by a somewhat bee
ry
;e in the College of Insolence, and corn-
the most part (each of these delightful
1, of old leather, old boards, and old.
a rapid state oic, irredeemable decomposi-