outsider the omnibus, how many vacant places
there are inside. When there are more such
vacancies than four, no such notification would
be required; but when there is only one, or
when there are only two, three, or four places
empty, it is much needed. An omnibus is often
stopped, to the inconvenience of those within
it, by two or three persons, who wish to ride
together, and there is often a long delay while
the conductor explains that there is only room
for one, or two. The friends decline to be
parted, and, shaking their heads indignantly,
retire to the pavement to wait for the next 'bus;
but, in the mean while, time has been lost, and
the horses have had it "taken out of them,"
by a pull up and a fresh start, which the poor
beasts always feel very keenly.

Surely these demands are few and simple
enough: increased width; seats divided into
compartments; a means of communicating with
the conductor; a board with a number on it.
We do not ask for impossibilities. We do not
press for the adoption of any of those fanciful
designs which dreadful ingenious people have
published from time to time, and from the adoption
of which we are assured (by the designers)
such comfort would flow that a ride in an
omnibus would be a pleasure eagerly anticipated,
instead of a necessity grudgingly encountered.
We do not ask for such an omnibus as might
run in the streets of a Utopia. A conveyance
in almost all respects resembling this which we
are asking for, may at this very time be seen in
the streets of Paris, in the streets of Manchester,
and even in a few districts of our own most
backward metropolis. The thing can be done,
then. But will it be done? Not unless some
irresistible pressure is put upon those deadly
enemies of ours, the omnibus proprietors. Of
these purveyors of locomotion we, the Public,
have had some amount of discouraging
experience. Announcements of their benevolent
intentions towards us have appeared before now.
We were to have new vehicles, large and
commodious, built upon new principles, replete with
new comforts. Prizes have been offered for the
best new design of a model omnibus. We were
to have such a golden age, in the matter of
omnibuses, that a man might travel by these vehicles
without having all the worst passions of his
nature stirred, and might even be expected to
feel well-disposed towards his fellow-passengers,
however numerous. This was the promise.
What was the performance? A very few new
omnibuses on a more commodious principle
have been built, and kept running on certain
lines, while the mass of these carriages have been
left unaltered, or have only been improved in such
trifling ways as are not worth mentioning—a
couple of brass columns in the middle of each
side-bench, or some loops of leather nailed along
the inside of the roof for staggering intruders
to grasp at.

If the Public would but strike, the thing
would be done. If the public would only
manage for a little while to do without
omnibuses! It would be inconvenient, but consider
the " cause." The old clerk who lives at
Hammersmith, and whose office is in the City, would
have a difficulty in reaching his office-stool at
nine o'clock in the morning; his wife or his
daughters, when contemplating later in the day
a shopping excursion to Messrs. Shoolbred's in
Tottenham-court-road, would also be put to it a
little. Still the thing might be managed. There
must be a fund raised, of course. Persons with
strong claims, such as the old gentleman
mentioned above, must for the time be supplied
with cab-fares. The ladies of his family must put
off their shopping, or, for the nonce, deal with
some neighbouring tradesman. Between cabs,
and underground railways, and river-steamers
— warm weather coming—and increased pedestrian
exertions, and the greatest possible temporary
curtailment of town locomotion generally,
the thing might be managed, if the Public
would only strike.

The Strike would not last long. Our natural
enemies would soon be obliged to give in. What
would our troubles and inconveniences be to
theirs? Think of the horses. Not a few vicious,
and only kept within bounds by incessant work.
What would these animals be, after a week of
idleness? Think, again, of the amount of food
hebdomadally consumed by these quadrupeds.
All the omnibus horses in London eating
voraciously, and not bringing in a sixpence! They
would get fat, too, and there would be a pretty
state of things! A fat omnibus horse would be
so abnormal a creature, that he might be
expected to generate some new and terrible disease
of the plethoric sort. Between the horses turned
by idleness into rampagious demons, and those
in which plethoric symptoms would be developed
by the same cause, the " masters" would
have such a time of it, that, before ten days of
the Strike had elapsed, they would be ready to
pacify us with gilded coaches and six, if we
wanted them.

And if these, our oppressors, would find their
horses too much for them, as they certainly
would, what difficulties would they not have to
encounter with their men! All the omnibus-drivers
and conductors in London without occupation,
let loose upon society at one fell
swoop! These men are not a docile or easily
managed race, nor are they, as a class, averse to
strong waters. What rows there would be.
What terrific combats between "Waterloos"
and " Favourites," " Atlases" and " Red-Rovers."
All the 'bus-drivers and conductors
at enmity with one another, and with time
heavy on their hands, and that slanging power,
with which the members of their tribe are so
wondrously gifted, in full force, they would
lash each other up to such unheard-of states of
fury, that very soon, after the manner of the
Kilkenny cats, there would be nothing of any
of them left but their badges.

Really, when one thinks of all the horrors
and miseries which this proposed Strike would
entail upon the class against which its force
would be directed, the reflection is apt to
produce a weak tendency to relent: — only to
be counteracted by a rigorous and steady
contemplation of the sufferings which our