The anxious provisions of the Legislature for preservation of the roads have unfortunately taken precedence of measures for making roads fit to be travelled upon, or worth the care of being preserved. Will it be deemed presumptuous to propose, that some regulations may be adopted, for encouraging and promoting a better system of making roads, by eliciting the exertion of science, and by creating a set of officers of skill, and reputation, to superintend this most essential branch of domestic economy?
When roads are properly made, very few regulations are necessary for their preservation. It is certainly useful to make effectual provision for keeping clear the water-courses, for removing nuisances, and for the pruning of trees and hedges; for these purposes ample powers should be given to Commissioners; but the advantage of many existing regulations respecting wheeled carriages may very well be questioned. There can be no doubt that many of those regulations are oppressive to commerce and agriculture, by compelling an inconvenient construction of carriages.[1] The author has*
- ↑ The increase of the breadth of the wheels, though in a greater proportion than that of the weights, is by no means a compensation for it; because the whole breadth in many instances, from the inequality of the ground, or the wheels, will not be brought to bear whenever it can, the
