328 Tke Right Hon. Sir John H. A. Macdonald [Feb. 16, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 

 Friday, February 16, 1912. 



His Grace The Duke of Northumberland, K.G. P.C. D.C.L. 

 LL.D. F.R.S., President, in the Chair. 



The Right Hon. Sir John H. A. Macdonald, 



K.C.B. LL.D. F.R.S.(L. &E.) M.Inst.E.E., 



Member of H.M. Road Board. 



The Road: Past, Present and Future. 



The Road, during the latter half of the nineteenth century, was a 

 matter in which the public took little if any interest. When the 

 railroad era set in, the mail-coach, the travelling carriage, and the long- 

 distance delivery wagon were swept off the road, which was used 

 only for short journeys. Thus the highway, which before that time 

 had presented a goodly show of traffic, l)ecame a secondary considera- 

 tion in county affairs. The Bath Road furnishes a graphic illustra- 

 tion of the change. The 140 mail-coaches crossing one anoth'er on 

 that route each day disappeared, and nothing remains now to tell of 

 the active road bustle of that time but the disused pumps standing 

 at every interval of two miles, from which the entire road was watered 

 daily to keep down the dust-cloud, which so many people seem to 

 think had no existence until the motor-car came on the scene. So. 

 little was efficiency thought of in road management that the post of 

 road-surveyor became the consolation gift to the worthy local man 

 who had been a failure at everything else. The appointment once 

 again fell into the position described at an earlier period of which we 

 read in evidence given before a Select Committee, that the sur- 

 veyors in a particular district included "a miller, an undertaker, 

 a carpenter, a coal-merchant, a publican, a baker, an infirm old man, 

 and a bedridden old man who had not been out of his house for 

 several months." And it was declared that nineteen times out of 

 twenty, the appointment was "a perfect job."" This is not to be 

 wondered at, for in the same Blue Book we read that it was usual to 

 appoint " a prodigious number of commissioners for the care of ten 

 or fifteen miles of road ; and thus a business of art and science is 

 committed to a promiscuous mob of peers, squires, farmers and shop- 

 keepers, who arc chosen not for their fitness to discharge their duties, 

 but from the sole qualification of residence within a short distance of 

 the road to be made or repaired." 



These quotations relate to the early years of the last century. 

 Douljtless there was some amendment when Macadam and Telford came 



