Page:Report from the Select Committee on Steam Carriages.pdf/19

 for Horse Power on roads, proceeded to examine whether Tolls have been imposed on Carriages, thus propelled, so excessive as to require legislative interference, and also to consider the rate of Tolls by which Steam Carriages should be brought to contribute in fair proportion, with other Carriages, to the maintenance of the roads on which they may be used.

They have annexed a List of those Local Acts, in which Tolls have been placed on Steam, or mechanically propelled Carriages.

Mr. Gurney has given the following specimens of the oppressive Rates of Tolls adopted in several of these Acts: On the Liverpool and Prescot road. Mr. Gurney's Carriage would be charged £2. 8s., while a loaded Stage Coach would only pay 4s. On the Bathgate road the same Carriage would be charged £1. 7s. 1d., while a coach drawn by four horses would On the Ashburnham and Totness road Mr. Gurney would have to pay £2., while a coach drawn by four horses would be charged only 3s. On the Teignmouth and Dawlish roads the proportion is 12s, to 2s.

Such exorbitant Tolls on Steam Carriages can only be justified on the following grounds. First, because the number of passengers conveyed on, or by, a Steam Carriage will be so great as to diminish (at least to the extent of the difference of the rate of Toll) the total number of Carriages used on the road; or, secondly, because Steam Carriages induce additional expence in the repairs of the road.

The Committee see no reason to suppose that, for the present, the substitution of Steam Carriages, conveying a greater number of persons than common coaches, will take place to any very material extent; and as to the second cause of increased charge, the Trustees, in framing their Tolls, have probably not minutely calculated the amount of injury to roads likely to arise from them.

The Committee are of opinion that the only ground on which a fair claim to Toll can be made, on any public road, is to raise a fund, which, with the strictest economy, shall be just sufficient, first to repay