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as he can. They may be disposed to invoke dreadful vengeance upon me for
what they consider a sympathy with wealth and respectability, rather
than a fellow feeling with labour and themselves. But, Sir, my beery and
abusive friends are both wrong. I want the Act of Parliament enforced
for the benefit of the people; which is identical with our own.

"The mistake of vituperative WILLIAM, the error of hiccuping and
unsteady JAMES, is the supposition that cabs were made for none but
extortionate rascals to drive, and none but opulent spendthrifts to ride
in. Nature--for nature presides even over hired vehicles--intended cabs
not only for the conveyance of intemperate dandies with cigars in their
mouths, for travellers in hot haste regardless of expense, and reckless
pleasure-hunters dashing away to Cremorne or the Opera. She meant them
also for the accommodation of sober matrons of narrow circumstances and
broad umbrellas, poor clerks, small tradesmen, indigent authors, and
other humble persons pressed for time, troubled with corns, caught in
the rain, or otherwise precluded from pedestrianism. Now, an excessive
legal fare was enough to keep these kinds of people out of cabs; to say
nothing of the certainty of an additional demand, accompanied by insult,
and urged in derisive and revolting language.

"Let it be once understood, on all hands, that the new cab tariff is to
be a serious reality, a thing as settled as the price of a pot of beer,
and I am sure the increase of practice will more than compensate us for
the diminution of our individual fees. I speak of those who, like
myself, seek an honest livelihood by taking as many cases--that is,
fares--as they can, upon reasonable terms, instead of plundering such
patients or victims as they can get hold of to the most villanous
possible extent.

"Pray, therefore, impress upon all friends of the working man, that
working men are to be considered in the light of cab takers as well as
in that of cab drivers. There are some impetuous young blades who are
prone to scatter their cash about on all kinds of cads, amongst whom we
have the honour to rank in their estimation.

"Accordingly they in general overpay us monstrously. Advise them to
discontinue that injudicious liberality; it spoils us: it causes us to
be discontented with full wages, and to laugh in the face of a customer
who proposes to pay us our legal due. It has possessed us with the
notion that everybody who takes