Page:Remarks on the Present System of Road Making (1823).djvu/200

 very general: and as the Commissioners or principal men of the district are often the greatest offenders in this respect, the evil is one in which both the enactments and the application of them require the strictest attention and impartiality. After a road is properly made, the comfort of the traveller and the principle of economy on the part of the road-trust, both demand that it be not allowed to get much out of repair; the adage of "a stitch in time," applies particularly to the repairing of roads, and though not universally practised, is so well known, that it is, I presume, unnecessary to state reasons, for what no one acquainted with the subject at all doubts. The best season for repairing roads is, I think, the spring or very early in the summer, when the weather is likely neither to be very wet nor dry, for both of these extremes prevent the materials from consolidating, and therefore cause a waste of them, and at the same time, either a heavy or a dusty road; but if done at the time I have recommended, the roads are left in good state for the summer, and become consolidated and hard to resist the work of the ensuing winter.

When I remarked the great improvement in many of the highways during the last twenty years, I by no means meant to say that they are not still capable of much greater, or that many of them have not been much neglected. In many districts this is notoriously the case, and when the materials are the best, the roads are frequently the worst. There is no road round London upon which there is more heavy country traffic, than the first stage of the great Essex or Mile End road; and owing to the well directed attention of the chairman of the commissioners, and of their surveyor, there are few better roads any where, excepting in very wet heavy weather. Indeed I do not think it possible to do much, if any thing, in improving the superintendance and