1902.] on Auto-Cars. llS 



Eiissell in Scotland, will go down to history as having been the 

 pioneers who had to hack their way forward through the thickets of 

 prejudice of ignorant and biassed minds. They were eminently 

 successful for that time. They had to work with materials very 

 inferior to those which are open to inventive men now. Steam was 

 the only power they could use, and the steam engine had not at that 

 time become the highly developed magnificent instrument which it is 

 now. Nevertheless, they ran coaches in England and in Scotland 

 over considerable distances. There is a gentleman present in this 

 room to-night who has travelled as a passenger upon one of these 

 coaches, which I will show you upon the screen. [Numerous lantern 

 illustrations of early motor coaches were here thrown upon the 

 screen.] 



It is a remarkable fact that for fifty years after that period motor 

 traction upon the road was only attempted experimentally. The 

 railways opposed motor traction upon the roads bitterly; the squires 

 opposed it bitterly ; the farmers opposed it bitterly ; the inn-keepers 

 opposed it bitterly. Stones of large size were laid across the road in 

 front of the carriages ; ruts were dug across the roads, into which 

 the inventor and his vehicle might go down ; and prohibitive tolls, 

 varying from 11. 8s. to 21. 10s., were exacted at bars where 4s. or 5s. 

 was the charge for a four-horse coach. The result was that, notwith- 

 standing the great enterprise of the promoters and the great success 

 of the coaches, they were crushed out of existence, with the exception 

 of certain experimental carriages, and that attractive object the trac- 

 tion engine. 



All the legislation of the British Parliament was made for the 

 traction engine only, notwithstanding the fact that a Select Committee 

 sat in the House of Commons in the year 1832 and unanimously 

 reported that "The substitution of inanimate for animal power in 

 draught on common roads is one of the most important improve- 

 ments in the means of internal communication ever introduced. Its 

 practicability they consider to have been fully established." The 

 report stated that " They, are perfectly safe for passengers, that 

 they are not (or need not be if properly constructed) nuisances to 

 the public, that they will become a speedier and cheaper mode of 

 conveyance than carriages drawn by horses ; that they will cause 

 less wear of road than carriages drawn by horses." Notwithstanding 

 this report, a signally favourable one, prejudice prevailed, and motor 

 traffic was stopped for fifty years, and so we have been tied down to 

 the traction engine — that iron elephant of the road — which has 

 settled for us our laws up to the year 1896. 



By an invention of twenty-two or twenty-three years ago, road 

 traction became common on the Continent, and, while hundreds of 

 carriages were there careering about gaily, here no one could take out 

 a mechanically-driven vehicle, even if no bigger than a tricycle or a 

 governess tub-cart, without having more men in attendance upon it 

 than are required for a 90-ton express upon the Great Northern or 



Vol. XVII. (No. 96.) i 



