Aldermen say they can govern, and they have at last
got -a chance of showing their capabilities. An Act passed last session enables them to pass nearly any rules they please for the regulation of City traffic, to prescribe routes and speeds to all vehicles, the height and width of all loads, the time for heavy luggage to pass, and the hours for coals to be shot, the places at which shoeblacks may stand, and the rules under which costermongers may be compelled to move on. If they 4:an carry out the Act, so as to free the streets from deadlocks, and allow a cab to move quicker than half a mile an hour, without imposing intolerable restrictions on trade, or driving cabmen, carmen, waggoners, porters, coalheavers, coster- mongers, and warehousemen into open insurrection, they will have proved their claim to administrative power. If they succeed, we trust Parliament will empower them to -deal with the railway stations, now the most discreditable bear-gardens in England. The "lock" in Cheapside is not half so bad as the lock in the booking-office of any great railway just before the Parliamentary train.
Previous page
