What indeed? In Trollope's Barchester Towers, when Mrs Quiverful discovers that her husband, rector of Puddingdale, is not to become warden of Hiram's Hospital, she sets out to Barchester to confront the bishop. Not a walker, and not the owner of a horse or carriage of her own, she "begged that Farmer Subsoil would take her thither in his tax-cart." A tax-cart, as far as the dictionary is concerned, is a "small spring-cart on which a tax is paid." So it is properly a "taxed-cart." A "spring-cart" is a "springed-cart" — i.e a cart with springs. But were taxes paid on all vehicles? If so, why should this one kind of vehicle be called a "tax-cart?" But if not, why should this particular kind of vehicle be singled out of taxation. Trollope does not illuminate.
And so to the other nineteenth-century horsedrawn vehicles (barouche, basket carriage, berlin, britchka, brougham, buckboard, buggy, cabriolet, caleche, cariole, carryall, chaise, chariot, clarence, concord wagon, coupe, croydon, curricle, cutter, daumont, dearborn, dennet, diligence, dog-cart, fiacre, fly, fourgon, four-wheeler, gig, go-cart, governess cart, hansom, herdic, jaunty car, jersey-wagon, kibitka, landau, patache, phaeton, pill-box, post-chaise, rockaway, shandrydan, shay, sociable, spider-phaeton, spring-van, stanhope, sulky, surrey, T-cart, telyezhka, tilbury, tarantass, trap, troika, victoria, vis-a-vis, wagonette, whitechapel, and wurt) now add "tax-cart."
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