The Lunatic Fringe of the Law .
1 attended the other day, for the second time in a year, the hearing by Regional Traffic Commissioners of an applica? tion for a licence under the Road Traffic Act, 1930. On both occasions a small rural bus company .was applying for perini-- Sion to 'run a service for which a much larger company already. held held a licence, and on the second occasion its slender chances of success depended on proving that the larger company had failed. in its duty to the public by being. frequently unpunctual. The public in this case consisted of a number of foreign workers who were transported every morning to a nearby town. They were prepared to pay the small company at a higher rate because they believed it to be more reliable; but the Traffic Commissioners rejected its application on the grounds, 'if I understood them rightly, that the large company, though it had been inefficient, had not been grossly so. I am sure that this was a fair intepretation of a highly restrictive Act, but I do not like what I have seen of these tribunals. They take place—at least both these did—in a court of law, but evidence is not given upon oath, witnesses are not supoenaed but merely—if they can be persuaded to forfeit a day's work— brought along by the contending parties and there is (as when a solicitor told a witness to address the " learned Licensing Authority ") a slight air of travesty about the whole thing.
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