Page:Report from the Select Committee on Steam Carriages.pdf/98

 an exercise of the cool judgment resulting from experience; rather than of the genius depending upon original thought.

You do not consider the inconveniences of the present Steam Coaches to be inseparable from the invention?—Certainly not; but I do not think that any of the individuals at.present engaged in the pursuit are the mast competent persons who could be chosen to overcome the remaining difficulties, being inventors, who have almost completed their parts of the task, and not experienced practical engineers, into whose bands the affair of building the next Steam Coacher ought now to pass, under the general direction and advice of those inventors; if the building of Steam Coaches: is continued in their hands, they will only advance towards. perfection of proportion and execution by slow degrees, as the Patentees acquire that general skill as engineers and mechanists which is already possessed by professional engineers,

You think that the machinery may be improved by better mechanists?—I have not the least doubt of it; and yet those mechanists are not the proper men of genius to have invented what has been hitherto done by the Patentees.

Apprehensions have been felt by trustees and surveyors.of roads that Steam Carriages are more injurious to the roads. than. Carriages of equal weights drawn by horses; what is your opinion upon that point?—I should not apprehend that the present. Coaches are injurious in a greater degree than other Carriages of equal weights; and when Steam Coaches are really brought to bear. I think they will be much less.so than any Carriage at present in use, taking horses and the Carriage they draw against Engines and the Carriage they impel, at weight for weight.—All my observation upon Steam Carriages has led me to believe that they do no particular harm to the road; I could never perceive any peculiar marks that they left in their tracks, and an examination of the iron tire on the edges of the wheels of Mr. Hancock's Carriage shows evidently that no slipping takes place in the surface of the road; and that fact is proved to