The experiment took place “abreast between the new road just by Pancras to within a small distance of Bog-house Bar.” Apparently the only advantage which the new waggon possessed was its ability to turn in a narrow road, but although Mr. Bourn not only continued to build such waggons, but also answered his opponents in two tracts, we hear little more of him. Such “rolling-carts,” however, were also made by one James Sharpe, of Leadenhall Street. Sharpe was a pushful man. He believed in his system, and apparently made those in authority see its advantages. His rollers, you learn, were cylinders of cast iron, two feet in diameter and sixteen inches broad. An iron spindle was inserted through the centre of each. Several of Sharpe’s waggons were on the roads, but although every facility was given them, they never really took the popular fancy. And indeed, they must have been uncouth monsters rattling along the roads something after the fashion of the steam-roller of ten years ago. Just about this time, too, the light-cart faction showed that it was not in the least moribund. It indited learned and highly technical articles which the newspapers found space to print with some regularity. A typical reply to such articles was inserted in the Public Advertiser early in 1767:—
“There are people, I may say,” runs this most impolite retort, “a depraved Number, who write long letters upon this Subject in an ignorant Manner. Their Errors confirm Mankind of a sensible Turn what Measures ought to be taken for the Benefit of the trading Part of this Nation. The illiterate Scribblers he [the last correspondent] means to lash are those that insist upon the Necessity of Horses going at length instead of being placed abreast. The Power that draft Horses have in being placed abreast is so well known, that ’tis amazing any body is absurd enough to advance a Doctrine to the contrary. Then again, these deluded Idiots propagate, that the Loads drawn by eight Horses, having the Wheels placed nine Inches within nine, are destructive to the Roads, and that the Weight had better be divided into several narrow wheeled Carriages. Being thus destitute of Judgment upon the Subject, they do not reflect that the more Horses and Carriages the more the Expence increases, consequently that the internal Trade of this Kingdom would advance in this Article 100 per Cent. One Waggon with eight Horses in Pairs, drawing eight Ton upon the new Plan, don’t do near the Mischief that the same Weight would in two Waggons with narrow Wheels. Besides, four Horses at length cannot draw four Ton Weight. A late trifling Writer upon the Subject says, the Appearance of a broad Wheel Waggon was terrific. I think he may be pronounced a Cockney without Ceremony—a Cit that carries his Wife and Children four Miles out of Town in a Tim-Whisky, and, being most likely an aukward Driver, suffers the Squalls of his Horn-making Spouse to alarm his Dove-like Pusillanimity.”
Such a man, the article goes on to say, would surely be frightened if he saw a three-master sailing the seas, and he and his kind had better keep quiet upon a subject of which they appeared so entirely and pitiably ignorant.
The contest began to embrace wider issues than the mere wheels of waggons. It took in the whole question of wheeled carriages. It even went so far as to include a denunciation of the general policy of the Government, whose legislation, or lack of it, on this vexed question was, so the light-cart faction maintained, leading directly to an increase in the price of provisions. Nothing, apparently, was right. If waggons were constructed on principles which were as bad as they could be, so were the Stage-coaches, which also were using the public roads, though some of the controversialists seemed to forget the fact.
“We are desired,” runs a paragraph in the newspapers of this time, “to inform the Masters of Stage-Coaches, Machines, &c., that their present Method of hanging their Carriages high with a low Fore-Wheel, and the body of the Coach hung forwards with the Stems of the Box leaning likewise forwards, is all upon a ridiculous wrong Principle,—the Effect of the Stupidity of Coachmen and Wheelwrights; that if they pursue the following Regulations, they will find the same Advantage that the Nobility and Gentry have already done by adopting this Plan: Let the fore Wheels be three Feet, six, eight, or ten Inches high, the Stems of the Box upright, and admit as little Weight forward as possible upon the low Wheel; the Body of the Coach to hang low for the Convenience of Passengers, as no Benefit arises from its Hanging high to the Horses, their Advantage laying intirely upon the Height of the Fore-Wheels.”
This in its turn was argued. Then came a proposal to tax private carriages according to the number of horses used, and see whether such revenue would not counterbalance in some way the increase in the prices of provisions, which, of course, was following on this eternal wrangle of the waggons. Also there was more legislation. Some of the new regulations read curiously. “No tree or bush is to be allowed to grow or stand within fifteen feet of the center of the highway, on forfeiture of 10s. by the owner.” Cartways were to be at least twenty feet wide, and horse causeways three feet wide. No waggon with more than four horses might have wheels less than nine inches in width, and some one on horseback or on foot had to go in front of it. More criticism filled the newspapers, and more inventions appeared.
Meetings were held. One advertisement which appeared in 1767 has an agreeable air of mystery about it.
“All persons working Shod-wheel’d Carts, Waggons, Drays, &c. of all Breadths, are desired to meet at the Sun Tavern in St. Paul’s Churchyard, on Friday next, at four o’clock in the Afternoon. Enquire for No. 1.”
And more pamphlets appeared, but the roads failed to improve.
Then in 1770 another Act was passed giving privileges to the roller-carts which were denied to the ordinary waggons. “All carriages,” it ordered, “moving upon rollers the breadth of fifteen inches, are allowed to be drawn with any number of horses, or other cattle.” And, as a further inducement, such carts were to be toll-free for a year. Mr. Sharpe, of Leadenhall Street, prospered, and wrote to the papers to say so. The rollers, he maintained, were light and strong, and there was considerably less friction when they were used. And he challenged the world to disprove his statement. Whereupon an anonymous writer belonging to the rival faction—possibly Joseph Jacob, a coachbuilder who had already written against the system—entered the field, and ventured to suggest that cast iron was exceedingly brittle and not very light. Mr. Sharpe speedily replied. “The principle,” he said, and his point is of interest, “upon which rolling carriages are adopted is simply this, That, by the use of them the roads may be made smooth and hard, and by that means, become part of the mechanism: for thus the rollers are made to answer all the purposes of light wheels.” The anonymous writer appears to have felt the point of this argument, and was forced to retort, quite unworthily, that in any case Mr. Sharpe’s rollers were not his own ideas. “No,” replied Sharpe, “they were Mr. Daniel Bourn’s idea—a very sensible man and good mechanic, and who was also the first contriver of nine-inch broad wheels, who so long as ten or eleven years ago built a waggon on rollers at Leominster where he then lived, and brought it to the Society of Arts and Sciences in the Strand, by whom upon trial it was rejected.” The anonymous writer left it at that, but the controversy raged fiercely. It became so highly technical and apparently so interminable that somebody suggested we should all use flying machines and leave the wretched roads to look after themselves.