76 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



trade ill Pittsfield. Then, again, there is a great loss to Lenox, 

 because people do not come there when they find that the roads 

 are so impassable that they cannot ride for })leasure. We spend 

 on our roads some '5^1, 200 or •'$1,500 a year, and a good part of 

 it goes on to the end of our road — some three miles. Tliis has 

 been so certainly for the last twelve years, and I apprehend it 

 has been so for fifty years. That money is all thrown away, 

 because, as Mr. Hyde has well -expressed it, the work is not 

 well started to begin with, and it is not well done. Now, that 

 sum of money, expended every year under the direction of 

 a competent board of surveyors, or commissioners sent out 

 by thorn, would give us, in a few years, if only half a mile 

 was built every year, a perfectly constructed road, which 

 would last for half a century, with very little expense. So 

 far as that part of Berkshire and a good part of Western 

 Massachusetts are concerned, there is the same difficulty, I ap- 

 prehend, and we shall never get over it until there is some com- 

 petent authority which can compel the men who are elected to 

 take care of our roads, to manage them as they should be 

 managed. It is all folly to talk of the selectmen of our various 

 towns doing the work, or appointing competent men to do it. 

 You know the selectmen of these various towns have the least 

 possible knowledge in regard to the building of roads ; and with 

 lis, it is an impossible thing to get a man who understands how 

 a road ought to be made ; "and our roads have always been, and 

 they always will be (until we get some coni})etent men for high- 

 way conniiissioners), in such a condition that we cannot pass 

 over them with any comfort. It is just the same with the 

 county commissioners ; most of them are respectable men, but 

 very few of them have any acquaintance with the construction 

 or repairing of roads. If any gentleman will go to Amherst, 

 he will see a specimen of road making which, I apprehend, is 

 unique in any part of the world, and disgust him with the idea 

 of giving to county commissioners the ultimate authority in 

 such matters. 



Mr. UowE of Bolton. Tlie only reason for that was, they 

 had State aid. 



Mr. Goodman. I hope, then. State aid will be withdrawn, and 

 the commissoners, too. That is only one instance. What we 

 want, I say, is some head that can perfect a system ramifying 



