Page:Remarks on the Present System of Road Making (1823).djvu/203

 nature of the business, his place is filled by another, who comes in for the same time to take lessons at the expense of the parish. Thus, while many simple trades require, by law, an apprenticeship of seven years, before the person is thought qualified to practise with his own capital, the road-surveyor is supposed fit, the very hour he is named, for an office which requires at least as much understanding and experience as the average of trades, and in which he has the capital of all the parish to speculate with. For these reasons, I have always been convinced of the propriety of an intelligent accountable officer in each district, but I do not see to whom he can be responsible with so great propriety, or in other words, in whom the chief control can be so well vested, as in the gentlemen who live in the county, who are almost daily witnesses of what is doing, and are chiefly interested in keeping down the expenses, at the same time having their roads in good repair.

Whether a board of roads, appointed by parliament, meeting once every year, and forming a report of the expense and state of the roads in each county, to be presented to parliament, with such observations as present themselves, as to improvements, or otherwise, taken from general surveys made by persons appointed by them, would be useful, by exciting a spirit of emulation and attention on the part of the different trusts, every member of this honourable Committee is as able, and perhaps more able, to give a disinterested judgment than I am; for I conclude, that if surveys are to be made, engineers will think they have some chance of being selected as the most proper persons to be employed on the occasion, under the board. The state of the roads continue to improve throughout the kingdom. Every friend to his country will be pleased, if the march of this improvement can be accelerated by a moderate reform, and carried into