content with the present class of omnibuses—
the same carriages, it is true, but horsed,
driven, conducted, and kept in repair, and
with such temporary constructive improvements
as are practicable without impeding
the public service—under a better and a
stronger system, and the whole under the
control of a public and responsible company,
instead of a private and irresponsible
proprietor.

To this the public make answer,
"Certainly we will be contented with the
present vehicles till superior ones are built; but
allow us to state a few little items of which
we stand in need, and which can be
conceded to us without delay. We want a clean
omnibus. We object to the straw that is
either musty or reeking with umbrella
droppings. We protest against the fleas with
which the cushions are sometimes infested.
We denounce the abominable odour exhaled
by those cushions and by the padded walls.
Railway carriages don't smell so. We will not
have that filthy, glimmering, spluttering
lamp at night, which often goes out in the
middle of the journey, and whose horrible
smell makes the omnibus akin to an Esquimaux
kraal in blubber-boiling time. We do
not want to be either hustled into an omnibus
like a pickpocket en route for Coldbathfields,
or shot out of it like a coffin from a plague-
cart. We do not like the door being continually
opened and shut at the sweet will of the
conductor, when he takes it into his head
that an old lady a hundred and fifty yards off
is making telegraphic signs to him with a
view of going to Paddington. We do not
want our wives' dresses to be shut in the said
door, or our fingers jammed in it, or our shins
bruised by the iron rod that runs across it
transversely. We want some better mode
of communication with the conductor than
the ordinary poke in his ribs with the
walkingstick, or the grapple of his coat skirt, or
the friendly pinch of his great-coated arm.
We think, too, that there might be a better
telegraphical system established between
the driver and conductor than the present
familiar. " Hi, Bill, 'old 'ard! " We do
not wish—being inside passengers—to have
our vision obscured, and our faces (if we are
next the door) bruised by the descending boots
of passengers on the roof; or, sitting thereon,
we do not wish to be precipitated into the
street, while the boys jeer us for our clumsiness,
and the driver tells us to look alive. We
want a civil conductor and a good-humoured
driver; and last, but not least of all, we
want a moderate fare, and a table of fares
outside, that we may know exactly how far
we can travel, and for how much. At first
sight a fixed fare, as the invariable six-sous
in Paris, would appear an omnibus requirement
of the first moment. A fixed tariff,
indeed, seems essential to the complete
development of the French system of correspondences;
but when the vast extent which
London covers, the long expanse of suburban
roads—say the Great North, the Camden
Town, the Camberwell, the Old Kent roads—
when these are taken into consideration,
the denial of some modification of a sliding
scale of prices seems as unjust to the public
as to the company. I believe however, that
it is the intention of the company to establish
the Fourpenny piece as the Great Trunk fare,
and that the cross fractions branching from
it will be inconsiderable.

There are, at this present working, more
than one million and a half omnibus
passengers (taking each journey as a passenger)
per annum. For their accommodation there
are from eight to nine hundred omnibuses
plying on different lines, and belonging to
different proprietors, extensive and small,
wealthy and poor. Of these eight hundred
omnibuses the company have bought, and
are in actual possession and use of,
upwards of four hundred. Each omnibus is
estimated at a value of one hundred pounds.
To work it ten horses are required, each
horse worth from thirty to thirty-five
pounds. Beside the actual value of each
omnibus, the Times or goodwill of each (a
sort of tacit monopoly of running on stated
lines) has been valued and paid for at
one hundred pounds; the rolling stock of
the company may thus be estimated
roughly, at about two hundred and twenty
thousand pounds. Each omnibus earns, on
an average, eighteen pounds a-week, and costs,
including everything—driver, conductor, feed
of horses (each horse has twenty-one pound
of oats and hay per diem), wear and tear,
and stabling—fifteen pounds: thus giving a
profit of three pounds a-week. A cheering
prospect in the dividend point of view is
thus offered to the shareholders, particularly
when the number of omnibuses are
considered, and also that the outstanding four
hundred will ere long be added. It is a
pity, though, that no opportunity for rigging
the market offers in a speculative sense, for
the shares are all bought up, paid up, and
the holders are, as I have premised, French
in the proportion of seventy-five per cent.

There is something humorous, but I am
afraid at the same time not a little
humiliating in the quiet, business-like promptitude
with which our astute allies have quietly
invaded us—the nation of shopkeepers; how
they have noiselessly mounted our coach-
boxes, assumed the whip and ribbons, and
greased our wheels for us. The London
omnibuses these six months past have borne
no outward or visible traces of a change of
proprietary or discipline: yet all this time a
stealthy société en commandite, with limited
liability—in the real acceptation of the
term—has been day by day adding to its
rolling stock—a stock which they chucklingly
declare has also a permanent way laid down
ibr it to roll upon, constructed and kept in
repair at the public charge. Is not the whole