to sustain the Wear of very heavy Loads. ae 
run on a Road, and recommend the repeal of this law; without 
seeming to be aware, that very soon after this most absurd Law 
was enacted (in 1773), it was repealed: but that deep Ruts on all 
the Parish Roads (and on too many of the Turnpike Roads, also) 
had, in the interval, become so universal, and the difficulty of 
drawing Carriages, but in these Ruts, so great, that the custom 
thus fatally introduced, of making all Axletrees of similar lengths, 
has scarcely ever since been deviated from; nor will this be done 
to any extent, I believe, until inducements have for some years 
been held out, to the making of new Carriages, or applying new 
Axletrees, such, that the Wheels of different Carriages may run 
in divers tracks, as | have mentioned in p. 103; until at length, 
the Legislature can go the full length, of enacting the very op- 
posite of what they did in 1773! 
It was (as I have fully shown in my Derbyshire Report) a not 
less absurd mistake in legislating for the public Roads (in 1773, 
or earlier) than that to I which have above alluded, which encour- 
aged the introduction of wheels of greater breadth of rim, than 
about six inches, by granting great and mischievous indulgences, 
in weights and numbers of Horses and in easy Tolls, to the Wag- 
gons with Wheels 9, 12, and 16 inches broad, and at the same 
time, so loosely and improperly defining these broad Wheels, 
that the exemptions might, and have to the present day been 
claimed, by the owners of Waggons, which in no degree comply 
with the mistaken intentions of the framers of the act alluded to: 
while the excessive weights which. these ‘‘ stone-crushing ma- 
chines” carry (to use the words of Sir Joseph Banks, regarding the 
Waggons on the Hounslow Road), contribute more than any 
other circumstance, to the great expense and bad state of the 
main Roads: particularly where brittle gravel or soft stone are 
the Road Materials. 
It is the rounded or Larreled form of the rims of these broad 
Wheels, and the use of a thick streak of Tire in the middle (with 
the addition mostly of projecting Nail-heads) occasioning them 
to run on surfaces considerably narrower than 6 inches, in most 
instances, which causes them, now, to be so very mischievous: and 
were these gross evasions to be restrained, and flat horizontally- 
rolling rims, of 9, 12 and 16 inches, to be really enforced, 
(whether as cones or cylinders,) even the impolitic indulgences 
granted to these Broad Wheels, or greater ones, as to Horses and 
Tolls, would not be able to keep them for many weeks upon the 
Roads ; so true is it, that Road- Rollers, and Carriages for trans- 
porting Loads, are altogether different things. 1 cannot avoid 
adding my conviction, that the late Mr. Cummings, from to- 
tally over-looking the brittle and crushable nature of Road Ma- 
terials, (a property not confined to these, but extending to all 
$3 Materials, 
