I found it impossible to adapt the law, as it existed in my time, so as effectually to compel the carmen to keep themselves in cleanly, respectable attire, or their vehicles in proper order. When summoned and fined, their comments evinced the inutility of the punishment. I have said to one, "Your car has been proved to be in a most disgraceful state, and I shall fine you ten shillings." The reply has been, "I thank yer worship, shure _that fine will help me to mend it_." I have told another that I would suspend his licence for a month; but this only elicited a request for an order to admit him and his family to the poorhouse during the suspension. If the complaints preferred by the police did not effect much good, those brought forward by private individuals were, in their general tendency, and as a class of cases, decidedly injurious. When extortion, violence, insolence, or an infraction of duty provoked an aggrieved person to summon, the usual course was for the delinquent to send his wife to the complainant's residence, or sometimes to borrow a wife, if he had not one of his own, to beg him off. In the case of a young lad being the offender, the intercession was managed by his mother, whether the maternity was real or pretended. The afflicted female beset the door, and applied to all who passed in or out "to save her and her childher, or her poor _gorsoon_, from the waves of the world," that Mr. Porter was a "rale Turk," and if the poor fellow was brought before him, he would be destroyed "out of a face." A riddance of such importunities formed no slight inducement to forego the prosecution, and consequently the majority of such cases were dismissed for the non-appearance of the complainant; but sometimes the fellow who had been "begged off" came forward, stated that he was ready to answer the summons, and insisted on his loss of time being recompensed by costs. I must admit that I always complied with such applications, and I have enjoyed frequently the vain remonstrances of the forgiving party, who, for his mistaken and expensive lenity, acquired nothing but the wholesome warning not to summon a Dublin driver without appearing to prosecute.