The Sun.
London, England, 1853-05-02 00:00:00

THE NEW CAB REFORM LAW.

The new bill, endorsed by the Hon. Henry Fitzroy
and Lord Palmerston, introduced into the House of
Commons for "the better Regulation of Metropolitan
and Hackney Carriages," contains the following pro-
visions :

After the first of next October all persons desirous of
obtaining a licence to keep, use, and let on hire any
hackney carriage, must apply to the Commissioners of
Police. Inspection of vehicles will follow such appli-
cation, and, if approval succeeds, certificate will be
granted, upon which licence will issue. Without such
certificate, no licence.

Power is given to the Commissioners of Police to
make inspection, as often as necessary, of all carriages,
and if found unfit for public use, to suspend the licence
of the proprietors. All owners of public carriages
using or letting them forhire uacertificated, and in unfit
condition, are liable to a penalty of five pounds a day
for each day they shall so use or let for hire the carriages,
and in default of payment a month's imprisonment.
Fares are thus determined ; first, by distance. With
a carriage, four or two wheels, drawn by one horse, for
any distance within, and not exceeding one mile, six-
pence ; for any distance exceeding one mile, after the
rate of sixpence per mile, and for any fractional part of
a mile, over and above any number of miles completed.
Fares by time. For any time within and not exceed-
ing fifteen minutes, sixpence ; for any further time ex-
ceeding fifteen minutes, after the rate and proportion of
sixpence for every fifteen minutes completed. And six-
oence for any fractional part of the fifteen minutes. And
for every cairiage drawn by two horses one-third above
the rates and fares herein above mentioned. It is to be
observed that the above fares are to be paid according
to distance or time, at the option of the hirer, to be ex-
pressed at .the commencement of the hiring ; if not so
expressed, the fare to be paid according to distance.
Under these provisions back fare is not allowed to be
taken.

Tables of fares are to be put up inside and outside of
hackney carriages. In order to settle disputes as regards
distance, the Commissioners of Police have authority to
get due measurement made, the book in which the entry
of such distances is recorded is to be taken as conclusive
evidence, the said book being signed by commissioners.
The commissioners are, also, duly empowered to cause
to be placed at the several standings tables of distances,
and such other information as may be useful to per-
sons hiring. Four miles is declared a compellable dis-
tance to drive from the place of hiring. A reasonable
excuse before a magistrate, however, may be pleaded by
driver if question arises. All drivers must deliver to every
hirer a card, on which shall be printed, hi legible form,
the words "hackney carriage," and number of Stamp-
office plate fixed on such carriage. The number of
persons to be painted, or legibly marked on each carriage.
Luggage of a reasonable quantity is permitted to be
carried in- or upon such carriage. All property left in
hackney carriages is to be deposited at the nearest
police-office ; penalty, for default, 201., or three months'
imprisonment. The commissioners are empowered to
appoint a number of fit men to enforce good order at
hackney-carriage stands, and places where /such carriages
usually stop or ply for hire. These persons are to ex-
ercise the duties of watermen, and are to be paid by the
commissioners of Inland Revenue. No printed bill will
be permitted to be put on metropolitan stage carriages.
Fine, for drivers offences, 405., or a month's imprison-
ment. One magistrate can decide cases of abuse which
may arise within the limits of a police-court district ; if
beyond, two justices of the peace for the county are re-
quired ; and, if cause should occur in the city of London,
two justices are required to hear the case. In case of
disputes, the hirer may require the driver to drive to the
nearef t police-court, or police station, the matter to be
heard by magistrate at the court, if open ; and if not
open, notice given at station, without summons, sufficient
for hearing at next sitting.

HOUSE OF LORDS-APRIL 29.
JEWISH DISABILITIES BILL.
MAJORITY AGAINST THE SECOND READING.
PRESENT.

Alculisnor. Donoughmore Talbot Winchester
Canterbury Eglinton Veralam BARONS.
DUKES. Ell enborough Wilton Ab:nger
Northumberland Enniskillen Winch [lse& Boston
Manchester Egmont Waldegrave Caltborre
Montrose Gaileway VISCOUNTS. Colville of Cut
Buckingham Hardwick° Cast lemai ne rots
Richmond Harrowby Cornbermere Colchester
MARQUISES. Harewood Falmouth Crewe
Bath Harrington Hawarden De Male
Chelmondely Jersey Hill De Ross
Dowashire Lucan Middleton Dynevor
Exeter Macclesfield St Vincent Du nsandle
Salisbury M almes bury Sidmouth Feyersham
Camden 31a3 o Strangiord Grant ley
Drogheda Morton BISHOPS. Gray
EARLS. Nelsen Carlisle Gifford
Beauchamp Orkney Chichester Folworth
Bradford row tret Gloucester Rayle gh
Cla nwill lam Romney Liandaff Redesdale
Cardigan Sandwich London Sondes
Cried on Seafleld Li :Wield Southampton
Cadsgan Shaftesbury Oxford Tern plemore
Darnley Sheffield Salisbury Tenterd en
Delawarr Strad broke St. Asaph Walsingham
Derby Strathmore Tuam Wynford

FINACIAL ERRORS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

STR,—It is a hard and even a dangerous thing for one
to differ—not, perhaps, from this eminent financier, or
that other talented political economist, for we see that
done every day, and very boldly too---but to differ from
the whole squadron of them, and to say that the steeds
they ride partake more or less of the nature of hobbies.
But if anything would shake our faith in the sober
and steady and progressive qualities of their re-
spective Rosinantes, it would be the crisis in
financial matters at which we have now had the
luck, good or bad, to arrive. On one side we
have the financial representative of our Sovereign ac-
knowledging our income tax, the confessed main stay of
a free-trade budget, to be unfair, and proposing its con-
tinuance for seven years in a more aggravated form. He
has virtually, as well as verbatim, acknowledged that he
cannot improve its confessed wrongs to society.
But, if we look on the other side, we find a party
holding in its ranks the leaders of our hitherto reformers
proposing a theoretic and, it must be acknowledged, a
most complex scheme, infinitely more so than the pre-
sent one in which they lose themselves in details, and
for which they show no machinery that could make

it capable of a practical enforcement. The present sys-
tem is odious, but the other would not be better, so far
at least as the hateful, meddling inquisition into the
private affairs of the subjects of her Majesty is con-
cerned.

As for a third party in the affair, it is easy to see its
position is not reasoned. " Delenda est Aberdeen"
forms the only solution of its having taken up a position
on the right side.
The result of this contest bears out one's belief in the
fatuity of the leading ideas on both sides of the disputa-
tion. We see a victory apparently about to be gained
in an aggravated form by a system which no one now
defends. I mean no one known statesman defends it,
except Sir Charles Wood perhaps, if we can venture to
apply the name of statesman to the right honourable
baronet.

I am aware, indeed, a few writers, whom we cannot
reach, defend it in the limited scenes of their labours ;
and a few writers, if not the same, have pledged their
reputation to defend a paradox to the end of their days.
They can only hide their fallacies a little longer, be-
cause their foremost opponents do not know how to
attack them.

All things, however, taken together and calmly con-
sidered, do seem very strongly to indicate that neither
party is on the right track altogether. They have
missed, both of them it would seem, some essential
condition of the problem, each would, it is to be sup-
posed, sincerely wish to solve. But if they are not sin-
ooro that need be little business of ours ; the truth will
find its way without, and indeed in spite of its would-be
established dry nurses. Far be it from me to disparage
either the powers or intentions of our party leaders ; but
this is happily a country where, if there be occasion, and
the regulars are not at hand, we can turn out plenty of
special constables in the good cause.
In fact both parties, both Whigs and Liberals, seem
to err in making this a personal tax instead of a tax on
that material and purchaseable object called property or
capital, without any reference to its holder or possessor.
They are both on a wrong platform, though they
seem to have entered it in different ways and for different
reasons. But they are in such a position to each other
tkat the success of neither can produce a result which
is not vicious in principle. The reason our Whig-
steeped Ministry adopt it is plain enough. The reason
that our Liberal leaders do the same is, either the nar-
rowness of their views, or an erroneous belief in the
crude maxim that taxation and representation ought to
be equal in extent. They fear to see a certain unproper-
tied class untaxed, lest they may have less apparent
claim to the elective franchise. If this is so they are
wrong, and this part of their political creed wants re-
view. It is the will of the nation, not the supposed
consent of the individual, that should determine
I
PARLIAMENTARY DIVISION. the incidence of taxation. As for the manner of

that expression, it is a totally different matter. The
representation should be of as many as it is safe or poli-
tic to entrust with the franchise, and the number is
doubtless daily increasing. But to make a man pay as
a capitalist will not make him one, nor will the assump-
tion that a man has an independent property, in a tenant-
at-will income, tend, so far as I can see, to make him
independent.
In truth, to look for some means to remedy the ine-
qualities of men's positions, we must endeavour to make
it easier for persons, in all ranks, to acquire and hold
permanent property, instead of, as at present, allowing
so many obstacles to intervene. A tax on the springs
of industry and enterprise is not the way to do this.
There are some persons who make an outcry about the
taxation of realised savings, as if this would be dis-
couraging to the practice of saving ; but if it is hard to
tax the result acquired by industry, it is surely more
hard and harsh to tax such results in the very act of
being acquired, or even, indeed, when they are in the
gross passage from hand to hand, and are, in fact, in
most cases, not acquired at all, but merely greasing, as
it were, the wheels of the industrial machine.
In truth, however, the system of those financial re-
formers, as a proposed alleviation of evils, or at least a
change, has got fair support from even those who did not
agree with its principle, or rather mode of carrying out
its principle. It has, notwithstanding, done nothing
for us. We have the old tax proposed for seven years ;
and though that may be lessened, it is no favourable
sign of the power of the must prominently, urged plan
of opposition.
Why should the country not demand what it has a
right to—namely, a valuation of the property of the
country ; and while the two or three or four fac-
tions, if they count so many, are left to worry each
' other, and try to cobble or tinker the effete income
tax, we might simply inquire what objections could be
found for a totally new direct tax proportioned to the
value of such property. This value is, as a rule, always
proportioned to the net yearly increase of such capital
or property, which net yearly increase is, in fact, identical
with the current interest of money.
It is this net increase which is the only proper subject '
of direct and permanent taxation. The difficulties of
carrying out the plan would vanish before an energetic
Minister who really had the plan and its success at heart.
A local valuation for each parish, made principally by
persons on the spot, and regulated, as is done in Ame-
rica, by perhaps some board fdr each county, and then
adjusted fairly between the counties by some central
authority, would not seem difficult. Much of the
machinery exists. And the best of it would be that, by
the simplicity of such a mode, every one, landowners as
well as other capitalists, would gain by the saving of ex-
penses in collection.
I did not mean to write at so much length.
Believe me, &c., &c.,

ONO MOS.

THE DEBATE ON TIIE INCOME TAX.