| Duty for four passengers inside and eleven out, sixpence per double mile, that is up and down 278 miles | £00s.00d. 2529016000 |
| Stamps for receipts on payment of ditto | 1012006 |
| Four licenses (four coaches being used successively up and down) | 20000000 |
| Assessed taxes on coachmen and guards | 17010000 |
| —————— | |
| £2568018006 |
The coach also paid, in the same period, £2537 7s. 8d. for tolls.
Another coach proprietor, W. B. Thorne, told the same Committee that on five coaches to Dover he paid for mileage duty alone in the previous year a total of £2273. On his coaches to Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham he paid £7017 in the twelve months, and the total amount of duty he paid for all his coaches in the year was £26,717. He did not think, however, that relief from taxation would save them from being annihilated by the railways, except as regarded certain roads where the railways did not directly operate against them.
Still another coach proprietor, Robert Gray, admitted to the Committee that he did not think it would be possible for the coaches to compete on the Bath road with the Great Western Railway even if all the duty were taken off.
There was no doubt that the coaches could not have held their own permanently against the railways even if they had been relieved of taxation as soon as the success of their rivals became assured. On the other hand, if the coaches could have been afforded such relief that, while not attempting to compete with the railways on main routes where competition was hopeless, they would have been encouraged to cater for business on routes not then served by the railways, an advantage would have been gained, not only by the coach proprietors themselves, but by the public. The early days of the railway undoubtedly brought serious inconvenience to people who found themselves set down at a station ten, fifteen or twenty miles distant from their home, with no chance of their getting a coach because rail competition and Government taxation combined had made it no longer possible to run a coach on that road. If the taxation had not, as was often the case, made all the difference between profit and loss, many of the coaches would probably have held on a few years longer, by which time the railways would have been more generally developed. As it was they were withdrawn in larger numbers, at an earlier period, than would otherwise have been the case, and there were many instances of great hardship to travellers whose means did not allow of their supplementing an incomplete railway journey by hiring a vehicle specially for themselves.
The report presented by the Select Committee of 1837 admitted the inequalities of the taxation on land travelling as between the coaches and the railways; but, instead of recommending, as the coach proprietors had wanted, that the demands on the railways should be increased, the Committee expressed strong disapproval of any tax at all being imposed on internal communication. They said, among other things:—
"Very valuable evidence was submitted to your Committee by Sir Edward Lees, secretary to the Post Office at Edinburgh, as to the increased speed, security and cheapness with which the post might be conveyed over the cross-roads of Scotland by the establishment of mail cars similar to those now in use in Ireland, thereby increasing the Revenue and opening up districts now altogether destitute of any mode of public conveyance; the same remarks would necessarily apply to many cross-roads in England. The grand obstacle, however, to the establishment of these cars is the heavy taxation on travelling, which utterly deters individuals from engaging in such speculations; while in Ireland, where the roads are decidedly inferior, but where none of these taxes exist, cheap and expeditious public conveyances are everywhere to be found."
The ultimate findings and recommendations of the Committee were summed up in the following emphatic declaration:
"Your Committee earnestly recommend the abolition of all taxes on public conveyances and on carriages generally at the earliest period consistent with a due regard to the financial arrangements of the country."
Unfortunately, the financial arrangements of the country never have allowed of this recommendation being carried out, and a further period of thirty-two years was to elapse before even the moribund stage-coach business was relieved altogether of the obligation to pay mileage duty.