Page:Report from the Select Committee on Steam Carriages.pdf/115



John Farey, Esq. 10 August, 1831. breadth of the wheels for Steam Carriages, because they will not perform well if their wheels are so nar10 August, row as to cut the road materially. I understand that the old system of regulations and penalties, as to over weights on given breadths of wheels for common Carriages, has been done away with on the roads in an extensive district round London, and I think that is good policy, from the circumstance that the proportion regulates itself by the interest of the owners of Carriages, when the fact is understood that Carriage wheels, which are too narrow in proportion to the load on them, and to the hardness and goodness of the road, will always draw heavier than wheels of a suitable breadth; and that though the carriers may not find out the proper breadth at once, they will do so in the end. The old Acts for forcing the use of very broad wheels by making tolls operate as penal ties and premium, was a most injudicious system of legislation, and did nothing but harm; the carriers soon found out how to evade the intention of the Act, by using very broad conical or barrelled wheels, rounding on the edges, which conformed to the words of the law, but which acted on the road like narrow wheels. The broad wheels intended to have been encouraged by the old Act of Parliament, were expected to act as rollers to make and improve the roads, and were encouraged to carry excessive loads for that object; but if the wheels of the broad wheeled waggons actually used had been really such as the Legislature contemplated, they could not have been continued in use on account of the great increase of draft; but the broad wheels actually used, carried such loads, that they crushed they road materials to powder, owing to the conical form of the wheels and the bending of the axletrees; they bore on the road almost wholly at the inner edges of the iron tires, and not across all their breadth, as was intended. The advantage to the carriers in tolls and in increased loads, induced them to use such broad wheels, when it would have been against their interests to have done so, if they had paid the same tolls for the weight of goods as other carriers, and their operation on the