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.