488 Comparative Expenses of Toll Roads in different Counties. 
The seventeen -English counties last» 
mentioned inthe Table; from Devon to 
Westmoreland inclusive, average only 
£29:44 per ‘mile; whilst the first five 
counties’ therein, ‘from Surrey to Essex 
inclusive, average £123.57: so that each 
mile in the first enumerated five coun- 
ties, costs very nearly 52 times as much 
as one’ mile in the latter seventeen 
counties! But'what seems to me the 
most extraordinary result of this Table 
is, to seé the roads in Lancashire (al- 
though hard limestone abounds in its 
northern parts) exceeding in expense 
per mile, the average of the roads in the 
four counties surrounding the metropo- 
lis; while, at the same time, these suf- 
fer the greatest degree of wear (Middle- 
sex excepted, whose expenses seem 
moderate)’'of any roads in the whole 
kingdom: these four counties are, at 
the same ‘time, the very worst circum- 
stanced in the whole island, for pro- 
curing, cheaply, materials of sufficient 
hardness and durability for the repair of 
the main roads; the brittleness of flints, 
the only sufficiently hard material they 
possess (except a very few blue cores of 
the Kentish rag-stone, about } Maidstone, 
and an equally limited quantity of the 
weald-clay marble, in the southern parts 
of Kent and Surrey), renders these sili- 
cious nodules, especially when shattered 
and partly perished in the gravel-pits, 
quite unable to resist great pressure 
from the wheels of heayy carriages, 
without being crushed down into minute 
splinters, to ‘be removed from the road 
as sand: as has long happened on the 
main roads about Stratford in Essex, to 
the extent of ten inches or more thick 
annually, of this flinty gravel, quite clean 
sifted ! 
What also places the enormity of 
this Lancashire road expenditure in an 
eqn if not a yet more striking point 
view, is, a comparison of it with the 
expenditure of Cheshire, which adjoins 
it upon its whole southern end, and is, 
in my estimation, the county the next 
worst circumstanced as to road materials, 
after the counties I have already men- 
tioned, and the others in the south-east 
part. of . ‘England, and on the eastern 
coast :* . even this unfavourably. -circum- 
. These “counties were forced nearly to 
rely on’ brittle ‘flinty gravel for their roads,’ 
before the great modern improvements, here, 
of importing, by ships or canals, hard and 
tough guarry-stones, to be> broken small for 
the roads; the Jatter a practice, throughout 
most of the northern English counties (see 
Derbyshire Report, vol. iii. pp. 260, 278, 
&c.) of thirty to forty years’ standing, and 
(Jan *4; 
stanced ‘county (Cheshire); pegs has 
but one’ small limestone-quarry Within 
its extensive’ bounds, and wire 
quarries of stone sufficiently hard 
tough for roads, expends on 2/85 miles 
of Toad, no more money than the Ran 
cashire people and travellers ate charved 
for one mile of ‘road, onthe averavet! 
Lastly, as compared with Yorkshire; on 
its eastern border, the’ two cotinties 
being, as ‘to stone, about on! a’pary"we 
find the Lancashire expense little ‘short 
of double the other, per vate? to afbbise 
In searching. for the cause 
anomaly, are we to glance at 
malous mode of. nominating i =, 
stracy? From whence, accord ing 
some, have seemed to ‘have. “grown, its 4 
apparent irresponsibility.. ). o20nm Sat 9 
Why do the Gloucestershire: trustees) 
continue a. rate,of tolls, so» highs,as) to» 
leave them. a.surplus, considerably: ex- 
ceeding the aggregate aan lnaees Great 
Britain, and almost, balf,the aggregate 
surplus of England? The above,and) 
other queries and considerations willj L. 
doubt not, strike many, of .youmy able, 
correspondents, whose sentiments») J; 
should much like to read onmthissinte- 
resting subject.—I am:your’ss&¢,) 
Joun Fanry, Mineral Satveyors 
Howland-street; 2d Now] Bea aiohaerd 
d? soriw fenud 
P.S.—I beg to-ask some of yourdegal, 
readers, who may happen:to:be:conver-) 
sant with the provisions:of the Metno= 
polis Paving Act, the 57 Geo. THoiex29)) 
and with the local acts for the collecting: 
of rates for, and the laying downaind: 
maintaining, the pavement in London,+) 
whether the persons now madly, bent: on 
taking-up and destroying. the: 5 
stones, in order to make carriagesroads) 
(wholly without the provisions of these! 
acts) of the pavep« streets, squaresy&es) 
(which alone these acts embrace); are) 
not acting wegally (as well as mostrinjus 
riously, as observed in ps 301/of: your, 
last volume), so as to subject themselves! 
to indictments or criminal informations: 
for their acts? As-also, whether: the; 
payers of rates, in’ any of: the (districts 
where this destruction of materialsy pur~ 
chased ‘by former rates;/is: going on; 
have not herein‘a good ground of | 
against future rates; on the ‘groundof 
misapplication — of _ money so‘toube: 
raised ? atetagas YoTting va 
«RBA 
pursued a as s long - scores} 9 of: podseraaherks 
trom whom this good practice, Hei 
rowed :,.yet, the. public mistakenly 
its praises and emoluments on an in 
as being its inventor. 
