Remarks on the Present System of Road Making / With Observations, Deduced from Practice and Experience, With a View to a Revision of the Existing Laws, and the Introduction of Improvement in the Method of Making, Repairing, and Preserving Roads, and Defending the Road Funds from Misapplication. Seventh Edition, Carefully Revised, With an Appendix, and Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, June 1823, with Extracts from the Evidence

by John Loudon McAdam

In the session of 1819, a Select Committee was appointed to take into consideration the Acts in force regarding the Turnpike Roads and Highways of the Kingdom, and the expediency of additional regulations for their better repair and preservation. This Committee reported, in the most decided terms, as to the success of Mr. MᶜAdam’s system. The following is a short extract from that Report: “The admirable state of repair into which the roads under Mr. MᶜAdam’s system were brought attracted very general attention, and induced the commissioners of various districts to apply for his assistance or advice. The general testimony borne to his complete success wherever he has been employed, and the proof that his improvements have been attended with an actual reduction of expense, while they have afforded the most useful employment to the poor, induce your Committee to attach a high degree of importance to that which he has already accomplished. The imitations of his plans are rendered easy by their simplicity, and by the candour with which he has explained them, although ability in the surveyor to judge of their application must be understood as an essential requisite.”

In session 1820, Mr. MᶜAdam presented a petition to Parliament, praying for the payment of his expenses, and such reward for his services as the House in its justice and wisdom should think fit to grant. This petition was referred for consideration to the Select Committee then sitting upon the state of the Highways, who had the account of Mr. MᶜAdam’s expenses up to 1814 submitted to them; and from which account it appears, that the distance travelled by Mr. MᶜAdam was 30,000 miles, and that there were 1,920 days employed in this service; that reckoning by the rules of allowance made by the Post Office to their surveyors, the expense of the above travelling amounted to the sum of 5,019l. 6s. which sum Mr. MᶜAdam states to have been expended by him on this service up to August 1814.

Mr. MᶜAdam further states, in his Evidence before the Committee; “This account is made from memoranda in my possession, and I have made the same with such care and attention, that I am ready to make oath that it is to the best of my knowledge and belief correct, whenever I may be required so to do.” Which he afterwards did in the following terms:

“I, John Loudon MᶜAdam, do hereby voluntarily make oath that the above-mentioned account delivered by me to the Committee on Turnpike Roads and Highways, is to the best of my knowledge and belief correct.”

“Witness my hand this 8th day of March 1821.

(Signed) Jno. Loudon MᶜAdam.”

“Sworn before me at Pontefract, }

8th March 1821. }

(Signed) G. Alderson, Alderman.”

Your Committee, in their Report of the 18th of July 1820, state as follows: