I confess that it was so long since I had played the advocate that it was with some trepidation that I briefed myself to appear in my own interests at the hearing before the Hackney Coach Sub-Committee. A large number of residents went with me, and I stated my own case and theirs. I should like to report my speech at length. It was a beautiful speech. But the only phrase I remember was one in which I demolished the argument that we were a lot of selfish, stuck-up carriage people by confessing “that for my part the only carriage I had ever possessed was a double perambulator, and I thought most of my neighbours held the same record.”
As a Manchester citizen I should have liked to have to chronicle a more speedy judgment, but historical accuracy compels me to say that Wilmslow, Levenshulme, Altrincham, and Urmston all took steps to protect the amenities of their roads before Manchester. It was not before October 8 that the committee refused to continue the licences. Still, we could boast that in six short weeks the residents of our little oasis had risen in rebellion against our rulers and governors and convinced them of the error of their ways.
A friend of mine on the Town Council used to
tease me a good deal about the beauties of the Withington District. He lived in lovely far off country himself, and had only visited Withington as a member of the Highways Committee.
“It seems an ordinary enough sort of place,” he said.
“Let me remind you of what Wordsworth says,” I replied.
Minds that have nothing to confer
Find little to perceive.
You can always obtain the just rude word to end a discussion from Wordsworth’s poems or David’s Psalms—David is perhaps a little heavy handed for these days.
I suppose it is because my forefathers lived on the marches that I cannot help enjoying a downright good fight. I know it is wicked to enjoy the angry scenes of a contest, but even the saintly John Henry Newman confesses on occasions to have had “his monkey up”—not a very fierce and vicious monkey, but sufficient of a monkey as a precedent for a poor pagan to refer to—and when you get a wilderness of monkeys up, as we did in the Battle of the Sites, then is there a scene for Homer’s pen.