The Sun.
London, England, 1853-08-04 00:00:00

THE OMNIBUS PROPRIETORS.

(Front the Morning ChSidellar----,--'"77 )
It-is now the turn of the Omni s ‘l" rs to get
up a " movement ;" and next sve-A > tuppose we
shall have indignant dustmen a geAr the restore- It ,
tion of their bells, and reduced petitioning for
.'
the abolition of twopenny steame ,or will the great
apple-stall interest, nor the Bret - .'%l' the crossing,
long abstain from carrying their :.. 'e -I. . -; into the
lobby of the House of Commons. P. : a.-r sweeps
will doubtless call for a repeal of that iniquitous law
which robbed them of their younger allies ; and, finally,
the professional rogues and vagabonds of the metropolis
will meet to consider the present depressed state of
their line of business, and to petition Parliament for a
restoration of the balance of power which was so se-
riously deranged, five-and-twenty years ago by the
substitution of overpowering Rowans and Maynes in
the place of the more manageable Charlies. The ephe-
meral glory of bursting forth suddenly into a full blaze
of type is undoubtedly very gratifying to our stable
worthies, even though they may not feel themselves
quite at home in interpreting the columns in which their
eloquence and wisdom are embalmed ; but, alas ! the
public are always craving for novelty, and two or three
days have sufficed to satiate them of Jarviesm. The
joke of yesterday becomes the nuisance of to-day ; and
the fellow who is simply ridiculous to-day will be an
intolerable bore to-morrow. If, therefore, the omni-
bus interest, or the cab interest, or any other in-
terest that has any fearful grievance to make public,
will take our advice, they will lose no time in letting
us know what they want. Another week may be too
late. The world will turn in disgust from the pro-
found thoughts of Jones and the burning words of Smith ;
and then, painful as it will be to ourselves, we shall have
no alternative but to reject the reports of their doings,
or, at all events, to accept them only as advertisements.
And now let us see what these omnibus gentlemen are
grumbling about, and what is the cause of their new-
born sympathy for their rivals. Although the " back-
fare " clause of the Cab Act was the only grievance of
which the owners and drivers of the vehicles in question
could honestly complain, it was obvious, at the outset,
that it was not the true cause of their dissatisfaction.
Nor were they insuperably averse to the sixpenny fare,
coupled as it was with extra sixpences for extra persons
and extra time. But they could not stomach the pro-
visions which secured an easy and expeditious remedy
for their extortions. " Call the fare sixpence, if you like,
they saidin their hearts ; " abolish back-fare, if you please ;
make, in short, what laws and regulations you fancy; but
don't be so shabby as to give our customers the means of
' pulling us up,' if we endeavour to mitigate the excess-
ive rigour of your code." Here was the pinch of their
case. The former tariff allowed them only Bd. per mile ;
but lives there the man who can boast of having insulted
one of their community with the tender of such an un-
English fare 1 Parliament had spoken of eight pennies
and four pennies ; but had not the cab-drivers, by the
judicious use of their tongues and fists, immutably gra-
duated the scale in shillings and sixpences ? And if they
succeeded in imposing this modification of the Act on
grown-up and sturdy men, at what point did their
ceasere-
paorncitayn,ora young when they
mothertheyhad burdenedtodeal withah a brace an infirm
old
woman, of
over-fatigued children, or a helpless stranger stranded
at Billingsgate, with half-a-dozen outlandish trunks and
boxes ? The cabmen of London, it was notorious,
had taken the law into their own hands ; and.
they had succeeded in doing this simply because
the Legislature had provided no efficacious means
of preventing them. The unlucky traveller who dif-
fered in opinion from his driver preferred a little impo-
sition to the glorious uncertainties and less glorious
delays of the law. The man of business found it a less
evil to pay a rogue an extra shilling than to waste two
or three days in summoning and prosecuting him, and
in measuring distances ppo bond publico ; while, to un-
protected females and helpless foreigners, the dread tri-
bunals of British justice were more terrible than all the
oaths, outrages, and overcharges of the hackney ruffians.
But how could this systematised extortion con-
tinue when tables of fares were to be hung up at
every stand, when distances were to be measured
and recorded beforehand, when the number of the
driver's badge was to be delivered to the customer
at starting as a security for civility and honesty,
and when any complaint might be instantly and
finally redressed by the nearest magistrate ? The
palmy days of the trade were gone for ever, unless some
device could be discovered for rendering such regula-
tions inoperative. That device, however, has now been
found, in the shape of a right of appeal from magisterial
decisions. Such is the demand of the cab-owners,
echoed by the omnibus proprietors at their meeting of
last Monday ; and, as will be seen from the Parliamen-
tary notice-paper, Lord Dudley Stuart has undertaken
to advocate this claim of the combined interests. " The
appeal, the whole appeal, and nothing but the appeal,
is the demand of these bold Britons ; and the omni-
bus people illustrate the necessity for it by the hard
case—which will doubtless rank next to the great
Phillips case in the causes celebres of Cabbery—of no less
a personage than the veritable proprietor of an omnibus
being sent to prison for a month, for pushing off his new
cushions the feet of some Yankeely-disposed traveller,
who had refused to comply with a request to remove
them. What records of human injustice and wicked-
ness would be so harrowing as the Newgate Calendar,
edited by the inmates of that respectable establish-
ment ? We own that we give but imperfect credit to
Cranbourne Hotel reports of cab and 'bus decisions.
The lion tells us, in Lafontaine's fable, that he would
I probably have had—

le dessus,
Si mes confreres savaient peindre.

And it is not improbable that the "unjust judge " may
have his own version of the cushion case.

What is this appeal wanted for ? Are the metropo-
litan magistrates so igncrant of law that they cannot
put a sound construction upon an Act of Parliament
which even a cabman can understand ? Or are they so
inexperienced m the art of sifting truth from falsehood
that they cannot be trusted to pronounce a con-
clusive judgment upon questions of disputed distances
and alleged misconduct ? If any tribunal can be
competent to deal with such subjects, it is the
police court. The men who preside there have had
a legal education ; and, as practising barristers, they
have acquired in Westminster-hall and on circuit some
knowledge of human nature, and a rapid insight into
human roguery. And to whom are we to appeal ?
To the Quarter Sessions ? To the quiet country gen-
tlemen of Middlesex and Surrey, who meet occasionally
in petty sessions to impose a ss. fine on the village
drunkard, or to send a pilfering tramp to the tread-
mill, and who muster at rarer intervals, but in more
formidable numbers, round Sergeant Adams or Mr.
Puckle, to help them to transfer the metropolitan
thieves from our gaols to houses of correction, peniten-
tiaries, and hulks ? Or shall the appeal be to the Supe-
rior Courts of Common Law, and thence, of course, to
the House of Lords ? Shall we invite the "plain" Camp-
bell, or the acute Jervis, or the grave Pollock to mea-
sure the distance between the Spotted Dog and the
Bell and Horns, or between Petticoat-lane, and
Smithfield Market. Shall we bring the profound
learning of a Parke and the vigorous intellect of
a Maule to bear upon the momentous questions which
daily arise in deciding the legal character of the peculiar
words and gestures the gentlemen of the whip ? Is
this the modest proposal of Lord D. Stuart's clients ?
It matters not—any appeal is utterly out of the ques-
tion. If Parliament were disposed to grant it, we
would suggest the simpler course of repealing alto-
gether every act which in the slightest degree controls
the conduct of our street-drivers. What the public has
so long demanded, and at last obtained, is effectual pro-
protection from pillage and insult ; but an appeal will
not only restore, but aggravate tenfold, those very de•
fects which made the former law a dead letter. If the
delay, trouble, and expense of summoning and prose-
cuting- deterred men smarting under the sense of wrong
from bringing impudent or extortionate scoundrels to jus-
tice, what redress will they find in enactments which ex-
pose them to the delay, trouble, and expense of a second
adjulication ? Ho w thankfully will the naerchant pay treble
fare—how submissively willhe bow to any jeers, practical
jokes, or even rough pokes and pushes—in preference
to being detained for a week at the Guildford Quarter
Sessions. It is needless to add that the drivers and
owners of our public carriages will of course have an
ample common purse defraying the expenses of those
rare appeals which chivalry or infatuation will leave for
decision. .
The clause which Lord D. Stuart proposes to intro-
duce into the Hackney Carriage Bill would be the Magna
Charta, of ruffianism, and we trust that neither the Go-
vernment nor the house will consent to it. We are not
surprised that the omnibus-men petition for it, and make
common cause upon it with the cab drivers. Like their
brethren, they chafe andfret, poor fellows, at the shackles
which fetter them down to decency in language and be-
haviour, and they naturally pray for any enactment which
will relax the magistrate's hold over them. But in this
hold the public see their only safety—they are resolved
to have prompt punishment for misconduct—cheap,
expeditious, and accessible justice in every dispute.
Let the omnibus gentlemen, therefore, keep quiet.
< advise them not to attract too large a share of public
attention, lest some inconvenient questions respecting
themselves themselves should arise. Let them look to till;
these
fares, tongues, and conduct. If they keep
within the limits of moderation, they have
• 0 will soon come.
fear—but, if not, their day of reckoning nothinga to
•

DESTRUCTIVE FIRE..—Yesterday morning, at half.
past 3 o'clock, as the policeman on duty was going his
rounds, he discovered a dense smoke issuing from the
back.part of the Rodney's Head Tavern, 138, White-
chapel-road, in the occupation of Mr. R. Elliott, licensed
victualler. Without a moment's delay he aroused the
inmates, and sent for the engines. In the meantime it
was ascertained that the skittle-ground was on fire, and
before the engines arrived the destructive element had
communicated to the billiard-room and kitchen. ' Water
was obtained in abundance from the East London Com-
pany's main, and the engines got into admirable play.
The fire was, after much labour, subdued. The damage
is considerable—viz., skittle-ground, billiard-room,
kitchen, and contents destroyed, part of the roof
off. The building was insured aintild the Sun, and the con-
tents in the Monarch Office

SUPPOSED SUICIDE OF A FEMALE.—Yesterday morning
the body of a female was found floating in the river
Thames, near the Limehouse-cut, which, on being brought
ashore, was found to be quite dead. The unfortunate
female appears to be thirty years of age, and about five
feet three or four inches high, and of middling stature.
The dress consisted of a chocolate-coloured gown, black
stuff petticoat, alpaca side-lace boots, black stockings,
and a green plaid shawl. The body was removed to the
Moor's Arms public-house, Bromley, where it is awaiting
the coroner's inquest.