BILL PUT OFF. (Hansard, 15 March 1858)

§ SIR B. HALL

said, he hoped the House would be induced to postpone the second reading of this Bill for six months. Private Bills were usually referred to a Select Committee, but this Bill was of such a nature that it deserved the consideration of the House. The Bill involved an entirely new principle, and would interfere most detrimentally with the public thoroughfares of the metropolis. Instead of applying, like Railway Companies, for power to make a road of their own, the promoters sought the use of existing roads which belonged to, and were maintained by, the public; they asked for power to appropriate sixteen feet in width of the public thoroughfares of the metropolis, in order that their omnibuses might run on rails laid for that purpose. Now as some of the public thoroughfares were only eighteen feet wide, only one foot would be left on each side for the accommodation of carriages, carts, and all the ordinary traffic. It must be admitted that there was hardly a thoroughfare in the metropolis at present sufficiently largo to accommodate the existing traffic, and he, therefore, thought it a monstrous proposition to ask permission to appropriate sixteen feet of a highway to the purposes of a private omnibus company. He would therefore move that the Bill be read a second time that day six months.