58 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



cracking jokes, Avhile they reclined under the shade of the trees by 

 the roadside. As the afternoon passed, the fiddler told them they 

 had worked well, their taxes were paid and crossed out. And yet 

 notwithstanding this squandering of time, the road Avas not mate- 

 rially injured, and the tiddler did infinitely better than some others 

 who had teams, but ploughed in the wrong places, putting dirt where 

 it was not needed, and leaving the road in such a state as to en- 

 danger the limbs and lives of all who passed over it." 



Another writer of one of the rejected essays, an iutelligeut 

 road surveyor himself, says : — 



" This tax in labor I conceive to be the most injudicious method 

 that can be devised for the repair of our roads. Every person 

 called ui^on to work out his tax considers it an onerous duty and 

 avoids it as long as possible, or at least his convenience seldom suits 

 the convenience of the surveyor, and by the delays and uncertain- 

 ties of having any one to work, the surveyor is obliged to neglect 

 the needed repairs at the proper season of the year. In fact, it is 

 almost impossible for him to comply with the i-equirements of the 

 law as regards the expenditure of a certain part of his bill before a 

 certain time, owing to the uncertainty as to whether his list of per- 

 sons will work or pay, or he shall be obliged to return them as de- 

 Unquents to the authorities, and draw the deficit from the town 

 treasury. 



" Again, if a person feels called upon to work out his tax he will 

 do as little as possible, considering it fair play to do less on the 

 roads for a day's work than at any other business, particularly as 

 he gets nothing for it except the erasure of his name from the sur- 

 veyor's book. I recollect well the first time I as boy worked on 

 the roads, nearly half a century ago, seeing the men sitting by the 

 sunny side of a bank in early spring, drinking their grog and tell- 

 ing stories a larger part of the time than they were at work on the 

 road. And as a further illustration of the work tax, a Avorthy 

 citizen Avas calling my attention to the condition of a by-road upon 

 which he lived. I asked him hoAV long since anything had been 

 done on it, knoAving that he had been one of the tAventy-one sur- 

 veyors of the toAvn. Said he, ' I notified the men at a certain 

 time to work on this road. They came and stood around all the 

 forenoon, on Avhich I told them that if they intended to stand their 

 tax out, they should do it Avhere people could see them, and I went 

 on to another and more public road in the afternoon. That is the 

 last Avork that hasjbeen done on this road.' " 



