THE ROAD. 
That, in fact, nineteen accidents in twenty are the 
effects of want of proper precaution, cannot be denied. 
Coachmen, it is true, are not theoretical philosophers ; 
but experience teaches them, that if they drive fast 
round corners, the centre of gravity must be more or 
less disturbed by thus diverging from the right line ; 
and if lost, over she goes : yet a great number of the 
overturns that occur happen exactly in this way. Why 
then are not coachmen strictly enjoined by their em- 
ployers to avoid so gross an error ? But it is in the 
act of descending hills that the majority of catastrophes 
take place ; and the coachman needs not book-learning 
to enlighten him as to the wherefore. Let him only 
throw up a stone, and watch its descent. If it falls 
sixteen feet in the first second, it will fall three times 
that distance in the next, and so on. Thus it is with his 
coach ; the continued impulse it acquires in descending 
a hill presses upon the wheel-horses, until at last it 
exceeds their powers of resistance. In short, they have 
a new force to contend with at every step they take. 
But this is not all. Instead of checking the active force 
of his coach before she begins to move downward, he 
too often adds that to the fresh impulse she acquires on 
her descent. Every coachman, who has a regard to the 
safety of his own neck, should check the velocity of his 
coach at the top of every hill ; which, in the language 
town to -witness the fact. French diligence-horses, however, fall from 
want of wind, as well as from want of assistance to keep them on 
their legs. 
