IIACKNEY COACH FARES.
IT is greatly to be desired, that some member of Parliament who has t regard to the public convenience, and the character of the Collective Wisdom for common sense, should draw attention to the absurd and vexatious regulation of hackney coach fares. The old rules are ob- viously quite inapplicable to the altered state of the metropolis. For i example, twenty or thirty years ago, it was just to allow back-carriage I to coachmen who after night-fail were required to set down off the stones, and where it was reasonably inferred they were not likely to get fares. The men had to return to the more densely inhabited part of the town, and it was right they should have an allowance in con- sideration of that circumstance. But now, extensive and thickly-peo- pled buildings have sprung up beyond the old limits of the stones ; and for setting down in those places where there is as great a de- mand for coaches as in most parts of the north-west end of the town, back-carriage is had after dark ; the reason for allowing it no longer existing. Just cross the New Road from Baker Street, or Gloucester Place, and the charge for back-carriage is made : step into the coach again and desire the man to drive back to the top of Baker Street, or Gloucester Place, or the nearest street on the stones, and the back-carriage is avoided, and in many cases a shilling is actually saved by thus increasing the distance, when the demand for back : fare is made,—that is to say, if the mile is not exceeded by taking the coach to the nearest stones, or the mile and a half, or two miles, or, in short, if a new distance is not created by the return. —gage tif our sapient magistratei held last year, that back-carriage could be claimed according to the letter of the regulations for set- ting down after dark in the macadamized streets, as off the stones. To avoid such and other errors, the rules require new arrangement, suiting them justly to the altered state of the town. Instead of the description, off the stones, which may apply either to Hampstead Heath, or the densely-peopled neighbourhood that has shot up about the Regent's Park, a boundary-line, sweeping the metropolis, ought .to be taken and stated.
--ltre of the present laws allows a hackney coachman to recover the value of a glass from his fare, on making oath that it was broken while the passenger was in occupation of the coach. The consequence is, that unscrupulous Jarvies have generally a broken glass in their coaches, for which they get paid a dozen times over, and unprotected females are especially chosen for this mode of extortion. To exa- mine the glasses when they take the coach, is what they do not think of; and when they dismiss it, the coachman pursues them to say that a glass is broken, and to claim the price, or threaten to bring them before a Magistrate. A crowd collects, the women are frightened, and the extortion succeeds.
It is right that the coachman should have his remedy for damage, but wrong to allow the oath to prevail against all probabilities and the averment of persons of unquestionable respectability.
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