Why should hackney-coaches be clean?
Our ancestors found them dirty, and left them so.

Why should we, with a feverish wish to 'keep moving,' desire to roll along at the rate of six miles an hour, while they were content to rumble over the stones at four?
These are solemn considerations.

Hackney-coaches are part and parcel of the law of the land; they were settled by the Legislature; plated and numbered by the wisdom of Parliament.
Then why have they been swamped by cabs and omnibuses?
Or why should people be allowed to ride quickly for eightpence a mile, after Parliament had come to the solemn decision that they should pay a shilling a mile for riding slowly?
We pause for a reply;--and, having no chance of getting one, begin a fresh paragraph.
Our acquaintance with hackney-coach stands is of long standing.

We are a walking book of fares, feeling ourselves, half bound, as it were, to be always in the right on contested points.

We know all the regular watermen within three miles of Covent-garden by sight, and should be almost tempted to believe that all the hackney-coach horses in that district knew us by sight too, if one-half of them were not blind.