Are you of opinion that the penalties now fixed by law upon over-weights are regulated upon good principles?—I consider the whole system as to penalties upon over-weights generally bad; the present regulations seem to me framed upon mistaken principles, and are the source of very great impositions.
In what manner might the penalties and tolls upon carts and waggons be best fixed?—It is not practicable very simply or in this way to state any one scale that would be generally applicable for each breadth of wheels: below six inches, there should be a rate fixed, which would apply to ordinary or gate-tolls, and at the weighing machines additional tolls, which I will call machine-tolls, should be levied upon all carriages which exceeded the weight, to be regulated in an increasing scale for each breadth of wheel, so as very greatly to discourage, but not ruinously to prohibit the occasional carrying of large weights upon any wheels.
You are not, then, of opinion that it would be right to do away the regulations altogether in respect to the weights, and apportion the tolls only to the number of horses?—By no means.
Are you acquainted with any particular weighing machine, which obviates the common objection in regard to impositions by the machine-keepers?—I am; Mr. Salmon, of Woburn, many years ago, contrived, and had a patent (which has expired) for a weighing machine, intended to prevent impositions on the carters: the machine being so contrived as to be locked up from the machine-keeper, and accessible only to the surveyor, and so as to exhibit the exact weight by a revolving index, like the hands of a clock, which are called clock-face indexes; a great number of these weighing machines have long been in use in the kingdom, some in the immediate environs of London: by looking at the index of which machine, the carter, or any passer by, may see that the machine, before the carriage is drawn upon its weigh-bridge, is in just balance; and all the time the carriage remains upon the weigh-bridge, the index exhibits the weight, so that the carter can take it down; and at the same time the dial-plate is made an abstract of the law, by there being written against each of the weights fixed, the breadth of the carriage wheel, and the season to which that weight is applicable at the commencement of penalties for over-weights.
Can you inform the Committee of the expense of a machine of this description?—I cannot; but it is trifling, compared with its advantages, and an index may be added to a machine upon the common principle, using weights, placed in a scale; they may be applied to any good machine already in use.
Are you of opinion there exists any necessity for limiting the number of horses in carts and wagons, upon roads where there are weighing-machines?—I am of opinion not; and even doubt the propriety of calculating the gate-toll by the number of horses which draw the carriage. Upon private or parish roads, where no machines are erected, there seems, however, no other mode of regulating or preventing excessive loads being carried, to the ruin of the roads, than limiting the number of horses; but in case of the practice becoming general, which already prevails in many of the towns in the middle of England, of there being a weighing-machine, kept by a cottager, at all the principal entrances at the town, at which he is authorized (by the local magistrates, I believe,) to collect a small toll for each weighing, for those who voluntarily apply to him, by which means all loads passing into and out of such towns, may be, and the greater part of them are now, weighed; and if this were adopted in the environs of London, (with the addition of a yard and a warehouse, where a carter who has inadvertently taken up too large a load, either of dung, furniture, or other articles, of the weights of which he could not be accurately informed, may learn the same; and where, upon the result of this weighing, if it should be discovered that he had much too large a load, he could there throw off and deposit a part of it, either to abandon it if of small value like dung, or to take it up from the warehouse, at a future time,) these entrance weighing-machines would remove the only valid objection to weighing the loads of manure going out of London, by which the roads are at present more cut up and destroyed, than by any other description of carriages.
Will you have the goodness to state the principle upon which you prefer that the tolls should be regulated entirely by weights and breadth of wheels, without regard to the number of horses drawing?—Because nothing can be more vague or unsatisfactory, than the latter mode of defining weights, or preventing the carrying of excessive loads, because horses are of such very different degrees of size, condition and strength, and the humanity or otherwise of their drivers are so very different; but more on account of the very great inequality of the different roads of the kingdom, which this general regulation is now made to apply to, as to the number and steepness of the hills: the precautions that have been used, of setting up posts upon the tops and bottoms of those steeps, to define where extra horses may be used, are entirely become useless, comparatively, none of the hills now remain, to any length, with so great a degree of steepness, as to cause it to be worth any one’s while to keep horses stationed there, for the purpose of assisting heavy carriages up those hills for hire; still less has it occurred that any waggoner has spare horses following his waggon, for which he must pay tolls, in order to avail himself of this useless permission, to use any number of horses up the steep hills.
Are you of opinion that stage-coaches require, or would admit of any regulation with respect to their wheels or weights?—I am clearly of opinion, that they would not; for in travelling, when it has happened that I could not get a seat on the front of the coach, I have, through many long days, carefully attended to the impression made by the wheels of the carriages upon which I have been travelling (when they have been among the heaviest loaded coaches) and have compared these impressions with those of the carts and waggons, particularly broad-wheeled ones, which we met; from which observations, and other more particular ones, I am of opinion, that the injury done to the roads by the coaches, compared with their utility and the tolls they pay, is not such as to justify any legal restraint on their wheels or weights.
Are you of opinion, that it would be attended with any advantage to the roads, to encourage, by any regulation or exemption from tolls, the use of carriages, varying the length of their axles, so as to prevent their running in the same tracks?—I am of opinion it would be very beneficial, and have particularly so stated to the Board of Agriculture, with an example of the tolls over a new road, which are so regulated in Derbyshire: in addition to which, some inducement in the abatement of tolls, might be made to those carriages, which now generally use single shafts like the farmers’ carts and waggons, on their adopting double shafts, so that all their horses may draw in pairs; this being applicable even to three-horse carts, as far as concerns the two foremost. Stage-coaches, for the reasons here alluded to, as they do all draw in pairs, and very seldom follow in any previous and deep rut, do far less damage to the roads than otherwise would happen; their springs also, and swiftness of motion, contributing, very materially, to lessening their wear of the road.
Are you of opinion that any advantage would be derived from the general commutation of statute duty?—I have long been of opinion that the whole principle of statute duty, as now regulated, is erroneous; labour in kind should entirely cease: and the surveyor collect a more equable rate on all property in his township; the present regulations for calling out the teams and making of a road rate, are so complicated, as to be above the capacity of the majority of parish surveyors, who in most or all instances collect the rates for the turnpike roads as well as the private roads.