THE recent proceedings of the London Traffic Committee call for comment for two different reasons. In the first place, it sat on Sunday from 11.30 a.m. until late in the afternoon, and a large number of persons were forced to attend its inquiry. We are not Sabbatarians, but we strongly object to the transformation of Sunday into an ordinary business day. A law still unrepealed if unenforced, makes church attendance a legal duty. Another hoary law forbids Sunday trading, and under that law, in some haunts of Puritanism, old women are still prosecuted for selling apples. In these circumstances we consider that Sir Henry Jackson, M.P., acted most improperly in holding his inquiry on Sunday in Church hours, and we are surprised that our Puritan friends have not made a stronger protest. When, after the passing of the first Reform Bill, Lord Chancellor Brougham sat in his Court on Good Friday, Mr. Gladstone said that he had acted as no judge had done since Pontius Pilate. Sir Henry Jackson deserves similar censure. It is idle for members of his Commission to talk of necessity, or to plead that the Minister of Transport desires certain cases to be investigated at once. Nor was the character of the business transacted one that appeals to us. No doubt the congestion of traffic in some streets is a scandal. On the other hand, the existence of a combine, more intent on breaking competitors and securing dividends than on serving the public, is a greater one. The warning of the proprietors of the so-called pirate omnibuses off certain streets means a drastic confiscation without compensation of capital. For the regulation of traffic there is everything to be said, but regulation should not assist a combine to squeeze out the small man.

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