[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIB, —About thirty years ago
the late Earl Russell, who Was himself a motorist, suggested that any motor-driver who killed a pedestrian should, ipso facto, stand committed to prison, if only for a very brief term. Any such proposal, at the present day, involving as it would the total abandonment of the theory of "unavoidable accident," could hardly be seriously considered ; but the general application of that theory by coroners' juries to motor accidents has been fol- lowed by such terrible loss of life that efforts will probably be made before long to impose drastic restrictions upon all motor traffic, on the ground that under present conditions it shamefully and unnecessarily imperils the life of pedes- trians. Few people would, I think, deny that motor traffic— perhaps because of its extraordinarily rapid movement—has not been kept under proper control : but it is to be hoped that no hasty legislation will be introduced which, in its remoter effects, would tend to hamper trade. I have been knocked down by a motor-car myself, so lest it should be thought that I am prejudiced, I append an extract from a letter, not written last month, as might be supposed, but nearly a hundred years ago, which conveys an obvious moral.
Writing on December 9th, 1840, the writer says : " I confess that I did not calculate upon the dreadful loss of life and limb, which each successive week reports, and which has excited such a degree of alarm in the public mind as will not soon subside, and which (sic) already induces a regret that the old mode of locomotion should have been so pre- maturely abandoned" !—I am, Sir, &c.,
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