THE CABMAN'S BEST FRIEND.
"Sir,
"The Police cases under the New Hackney Carriage Act show that a determination to struggle against the working of that measure prevails among the members of my profession, which, though I am a legally qualified medical practitioner, is at present that of a cabman. For, Sir, I turned cabman rather than turn quack or sycophant, one of which things a man must, in general, turn, who has to get his living out of people most of whom are weakly in mind, body, and sex: particularly in these days when ladies of rank and Members of Parliament patronise clairvoyance and homœopathy. I may add that I have less driving to do now than I had when I was in medical practice, and that I get better paid for it.
"My object in addressing you, is to beg that you will use all your influence to make the public insist on having the provisions of this Act, in regard to fares, severely carried out.
"It may be the opinion of insolent William, and intoxicated James, my brethren of the whip, that in expressing this desire I am merely uttering the sentiments of a truculent magistrate, or other odious and tyrannical member of the aristocracy, desirous of interfering between a poor fellow and the swell out of whom it is his business to get as much 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 a cab is infinitely rich: so that when a man does not offer us much more than we are entitled to, we are accustomed to ask him ironically whether he calls himself a gentleman. Hence it is that we dance, with menacing gestures, around those who resist our endeavours to cheat them; collect mobs about them; and pursue them with execrations as far as we dare. A stop will be put to this state of things by the strict and uniform enforcement of the much-needed Act which has been passed for the abatement of our knavery and the prevention of our insolence; I will add, on the whole, for our good: at least for the good of one member of our body, who is also a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Licentiate of the Apothecaries Company, albeit now necessitated to cry
"Here You Are, Sir!"
"The Stand, July, 1853."
Notice.—Unless all the Jokes, which have been sent in about Jullien "cutting his bâton," are immediately removed from the Punch Office, they will be sold as waste paper, and the proceeds devoted to the benefit of the "Asylum For Idiots."
