It has been remarked on a previous page that the hackney coachman drove a thriving business; how profitable it was we may learn from two petitions which were evoked by Queen Anne’s Act of 1710, which increased the number of licenses to 800 on payment of 5s. a week, such licenses to hold good for thirty-two years. Seven hundred coaches were more than profitable employment could be found for, if we might believe the inevitable petition put in against this Act; but nevertheless the new 800 licensees joined in petitioning that their licenses “may again be made assets” as under the Act of 1694. “In consideration of which, notwithstanding the rent of 5s. per week, we most humbly offer to raise £16,000 as a fine of £20 on each license for the use of His Majesty King George.” That there was money to be made in the business is shown even more clearly by a petition submitted by James, Lord Mordington and others about this time. The petitioners offer to “farm the 800 hackney coaches which are now thought necessary” at £6 per license for 21 years; they were also prepared to pay £2,000 a year during that period, on which the King might raise a sum of £20,000; to pay £500 a year to the orphans of the City of London; and also to raise and equip a regiment of foot at a cost of £3,000! The Act of 1710, it should be observed, altogether removed the prohibition against plying on Sunday. It licensed 200 hackney chairs and fixed the chair tariff at two-thirds of that in force for the coach (1s. for one and a half miles, and 1s. 6d. for two miles). An injunction to the Commissioners to fix at the Royal Exchange a table of distances must have been appreciated by the users of hackney coaches in London. It also repeated the injunction to use horses of fourteen hands at least; which repetition seems to have been very necessary, as Misson remarks that the regulation at the time of his visit was “but ill obeyed.” It was about this time that a curious system of wig stealing was adopted by the London thieves. We read in the _Weekly Journal_ of March 30, 1713, that:— “The thieves have got such a villainous way now of robbing gentlemen, that they cut holes through the backs of hackney carriages, and take away their wigs or the fine headdresses of gentlewomen.” The writer counsels persons travelling alone in a hackney coach to sit on the front seat to baffle the thieves. In vol. 3 of the _Carriage Builders’ and Harness Makers’ Art Journal_ (1863) was published an advertisement from an old newspaper; this was thought by the contributor who discovered it to be the first advertisement of the practical application of springs to coaches; it refers to a patent granted for fourteen years to Mr. John Green in 1691:—