Page:Report from the Select Committee on Steam Carriages.pdf/20

 the expence of its original formation; secondly, to maintain it in good and sufficient repair.

Although the Committee anticipate that the time is not far distant when, in framing a scheme of Toll for Steam Carriages, their general adoption, and the great number of passengers which will be conveyed on a small number of vehicles, will render it necessary not only to consider the amount of injury actually done to the road, but also the amount of debt which may have been incurred for its formation or maintenance; yet at present they feel justified by the limited number of such Carriages, and by the great difficulties they will have to encounter, in recommending to The House, that in adopting a system of Toll, the proportion of "wear and tear" of roads by Steam, as compared with other Carriages, should alone be taken into consideration.

Unless an experiment were instituted on two roads, the one reserved solely for the use of Steam Coaches, the other for Carriages drawn by horses, for the purpose of ascertaining accurately the relative wear of each, it would be quite impossible to fix with certainty the proportion of Tolls to which, on the same road, each class of vehicles should be liable To approximate, however, as nearly as possible to the standard of relative wear, the Committee have compared the weights of Steam Carriages with those of loaded Vans and Stage Coaches. They have tried to ascertain the causes of the wear of roads; also the proportion of injury done by the feet of horses, and the wheels of coaches, how far that injury is increased by increased velocity, and also in what degree the wear of roads by loaded Carriages may be decreased by any particular form of wheel.

The Committee would direct the attention of The House especially to the Evidence of Mr. Macneil, whose observations on this branch of the subject, being founded on a long course of very accurate experiments, are peculiarly interesting and useful. He estimates that the feet of horses drawing a fast Coach, are more injurious to the road than the wheels, in the proportion of three to one nearly; that this proportion