Among the many enactments for the protection of the public was one forbidding all four horses galloping at the same time. Mail-contractors, however, finding that they could not maintain the speed necessary to fulfil their contracts without galloping, generally secured a certain number of exceptionally fast trotters, for which they paid high prices, in order to have one in every team. Such an one was pretty widely known down the road as “the Parliamentary horse.” Proprietors of fast day-coaches, however, infringed this provision of the Act every day, as indeed every Act was continually infringed. The last years of coaching were marked by a reduction in the duties on stage-carriages, long urged by the coaching interest, and introduced by the Act of August 24th, 1839. It was a grudging reduction, and came too late to be of much relief to an oppressed industry. Up to that date the mileage duty on passengers was on the graduated scale of 1d. a mile if licensed to carry four; 1½d. if licensed for six; 2d. for nine; 2½d. for twelve; 3d. for fifteen; and 3½d. for eighteen; whether running fully loaded or not. It was always open for proprietors to license for more or less, according to the season or their own requirements; but, on the other hand, if in view of a slack season they licensed for a small number and then on one of their journeys took up additional passengers, they were liable, on conviction, to a heavy penalty. In addition, there was a duty of 1d. a mile on the coach itself. The concession of 1839 reduced this impost to a halfpenny a mile, and provided a graduated passenger duty by which a coach licensed for not more than six persons paid 1d. a mile; up to ten, 1½d.; not more than thirteen, 2d.; not more than sixteen, 2½d., and so on to the impossible number of twenty-two, when the license would be 3½d. According to a return made for 1838, the mileage duty paid on stage-coaches in England for that year was £166,625, showing a total mileage for those twelve months of 40,530,000. The Government thus apparently sacrificed £83,312 10s. in reducing the mileage duty by one-half; but the greatness of the sacrifice was more apparent than real, for already railways had begun and coaches were being discontinued on every hand, while a small railway passenger duty of one-eighth of a penny a mile made up for its smallness by the increase in travelling that railways brought. Still later, the passenger duty on coaches was further reduced, and made 1½d. a mile on any number of passengers; while the annual stage-carriage license was reduced from £5 to £3 3s., and the licence for each coachman or guard from £1 5s. to 5s.