hand, and care should be taken by the maker, that they are properly balanced on the handle, otherwise a workman will not be able to wield them with proper effect; the great error in making these instruments in England, is that of making them too heavy, and curving the blade too much.

Working Levels.

Working levels are absolutely necessary in laying out new works, and in repairing old roads. These instruments are easily used by common workmen. One of the best kind of these levels is represented in Plate VII. fig. 8. in which ABC represents the level, upon the horizontal bar of which are placed four gauges, a, b, c, d, made to move perpendicularly to the line A C, in dove-tailed grooves cut in the horizontal bar. When any of these are adjusted, to project a proper depth below the line A C, may be fixed by a thumb screw, which will retain the gauge in the desired position.

it

Fig. 9. shews a section of the horizontal bar drawn to a larger scale, as marked upon the edge of the gauge. This section is taken through the line ef of fig. 8. In this figure the position of the square iron bolt, or screw pin, is more plainly seen, and also the washer placed

under the thumb screw.

Three of these bolts pass through the horizontal bar, fig. 8. exactly three inches above the line A C; the other, seen at d, is only two inches above the same line.

Levels lor laying out slopes are best made of a bar of wood, three inches deep, one inch thick, and six feet long; on the centre near the middle of the rod, a triangular piece of wood of the same thickness is nailed; the sides of this triangular piece are so formed, that when the rod is placed upon a slope of one to two or one to three, a small pocket level placed on one side of the triangle will be horizontal, and the bubble will remain in the centre.

Ring Gauges.

Ring gauges for ascertaining the size of the broken stones are extremely useful. A ring of this description is represented in Plate VII. fig. 17.

CHAP. XII.

ROAD LEGISLATION.

Turnpike System.

It is owing to the turnpike system of road management that England is so superior to other countries with respect to her public roads.

The legislature, by giving powers to persons willing to come forward as subscribers, commissioners, or trustees, and act together for the purpose of making new roads, or improving old ones, adopted the wisest principle for securing an abundance of good roads.

Had the legislature refused to incorporate those persons who have executed the duties of turnpike trustees, and given the management of the roads to the government, or left them wholly with the parishes, this country could never have reached the degree of wealth and prosperity to which it has arrived, for want of proper means of inland communication.

It must be quite clear to every one who has carefully examined this subject, that nothing but leaving the management of the roads to

those persons who live in their neighbourhood, would ever have induced the people of England to pay, as they now do, a road revenue, arising from turnpike tolls, to the amount of 1,200,000l. a year for, although tolls are in every respect fair and proper for maintaining a road; and although Government, by employing scientific engineers, might have expended the produce of them with greater skill than country gentlemen; the hostility to pay them, if they had been wholly at the disposal of Government, would no doubt have prevented the making of useful roads so universally over the whole country as they have been made under the established system.

It should be remembered, that turnpike roads owe their origin, in many instances, to private subscriptions of considerable amount; and, in every such case, the main inducement to subscribe must have been the entrusting of the management of the funds to the subscribers, and giving them corporate powers.

The same principle of association has led to the making of the canals, the docks, the great bridges, and all the most useful public works of the country; and it is not conceivable how

See, in Appendix, No. VI., an Account of the Income, Debt, and Expenditure of all the Road Trusts in England.

U

such large funds for making new roads, or for converting parish roads into turnpike roads, could have been obtained as have been obtained, if the legislature had not acted on this principle.

But although it is unquestionably true, that it is to the turnpike system that the abundance of useful roads is owing, it must at the same time be observed, that great errors have been committed in carrying the system into operation. For however numerous and however useful the roads may be, they are, as has been already stated more than once, extremely imperfect, in comparison with what they might and ought to be.

In respect to the lines of direction, it has been observed that the roads are every where extremely faulty. They have, commonly, been carried over all the hills between the points of of communication, when they might have been kept on comparatively level ground along the valleys of the country.*

While the most magnificent improvements have been going forward in all other kinds of public works, displaying the greatest efforts of human skill, and a rapid advancement in the science of civil engineering, scarcely any road

* Foreigners who have heard of the boasted goodness of English Roads, must be surprised when they see the Dover Road. No road shows so conspicuously the low state of the art of road-making in England as this road.