Page:Remarks on the Present System of Road Making (1823).djvu/186

 be used, are entirely become useless, comparatively, none of the hills now remain, to any length, with so great a degree of steepness, as to cause it to be worth any one's while to keep horses stationed there, for the purpose of assisting heavy carriages up those hills for hire; still less has it occurred that any waggoner has spare horses following his waggon, for which he must pay tolls, in order to avail himself of this useless permission, to use any number of horses up the steep hills.

Are you of opinion that stage-coaches require, or would admit of any regulation with respect to their wheels or weights?—I am clearly of opinion, that they would not; for in travelling, when it has happened that I could not get a seat on the front of the coach, I have, through many long days, carefully attended to the impression made by the wheels of the carriages upon which I have been travelling (when they have been among the heaviest loaded coaches) and have compared these impressions with those of the carts and waggons, particularly broad-wheeled ones, which we met; from which observations, and other more particular ones, I am of opinion, that the injury done to the roads by the coaches, compared with their utility and the tolls they pay, is not such as to justify any legal restraint on their wheels or weights.

Are you of opinion, that it would be attended with any advantage to the roads, to encourage, by any regulation or exemption from tolls, the use of carriages, varying the length of their axles, so as to prevent their running in the same tracks?—I am of opinion it would be very beneficial, and have particularly so stated to the Board of Agriculture, with an example of the tolls over a new road, which are so regulated in Derbyshire: in addition to which, some inducement in the abatement of tolls, might be made to those carriages,