122 The Bight Hon. Sir John Macdonald [April 18, 



populatiou within radii of different lengths from the centre of this city. 

 There is no difficulty in seeing at once that, while by horse haulage 

 15 places might be visited, or 41 places with great difficulty, an 

 auto-car could make a visit to several places within the inner areas, 

 and could visit any of the 71 places in the 30-mile radius, or of the 

 160 places in the 60-mile radius. These places include Oxford, 

 Aylesbury, Buckingham, Northampton, Bedford, Cambridge, Bury 

 St. Edmunds, Ipswich, Harwich, Colchester, Margate, liamsgate, 

 Dover, Folkestone, Hastings, Eastbourne and Brighton, Chichester, 

 Portsmouth, Southampton and Winchester. In such journeys the 

 charms of country can be enjoyed as they cannot be from a railway 

 line. Who knows the beauties of Kent or Surrey, or Herts, who 

 never sees these counties except out of the window of a railway 

 carriage, even when, as I am told sometimes happens, the speed gives 

 plenty of time for admiring the scenery ? 



Kemember this too, that there is considerable economy in not 

 having to pay anything when not using your auto-car. If you go for 

 a month or six weeks to the Continent, instead of spending money 

 in feeding a horse you will have that money to spend abroad. Also 

 the gain to be made is not limited to those who enjoy the use of the 

 vehicle or those who profit by it in their business. In removing 

 the congestion of the streets, or in clearing them of pollution, the 

 gain would be very great. If, when a continuous line of vehicles is 

 crawling from Charing Cross to the Bank every horse disappeared, 

 as by the wave of a fairy's wand, and each vehicle moved auto- 

 matically, the time occupied in travelling between the two places 

 would be diminished by more than one-half; every check to allow 

 traffic to cross the line of vehicles would occupy only half of the 

 time it does now, and any vehicle that could pass another would do 

 so much more easily, there being no horse to draw out into the road- 

 way before you can make any progress. A string of carriages at a 

 Drawing Eoom or the Opera would occupy only half the distance, 

 and double the number of carriages would be cleared at the same 

 time, both in arriving and departing, thereby saving a great deal of 

 grumbling at the ladies by the gentlemen, and vice versa. All over 

 the busy parts of the great town the tendency to congestion would 

 be diminished. 



Then there is the question of pollution. How many hundreds of 

 tons of deleterious matter are blown about or caked into the face of 

 our insanitary wood pavement and ground into fine dust, to be 

 blown into our noses, mouths and eyes ? And how much of it is 

 carried by fashionable skirts into the houses of Belgravia or May- 

 fair, to be thrown up next morning by the housemaid's broom? Can 

 anything be imagined worse in a great city, where the air is much 

 more injurious than in the country, contaminated as it is by other 

 unavoidable impurities ? Ask any medical man whether the sick rate, 

 ay, and the death rate, would not go down if the pollution resulting 

 from the use of animal haulage could be sensibly diminished. Since 



