When roads are properly made, very few regulations are necessary for their preservation. It is certainly useful to make effectual provision for keeping clear the watercourses, for removing nuisances, and for the pruning of trees and hedges; for these purposes ample powers should be given to Commissioners; but the advantage of many existing regulations respecting wheeled carriages may very well be questioned. There can be no doubt that many of those regulations are oppressive to commerce and agriculture, by compelling an inconvenient construction of carriages.[2] The author has never observed any great difference of effect, on a _well made road_, by narrow or broad wheels; either of them will pass over a smooth, solid road, without leaving any visible impression: on rough, loose roads, the effect will certainly be different; but whether a loose and rough road can be amended by dragging an unwieldy carriage over it, or whether, if it were possible to amend roads by such means, it can be deemed the most economical for the nation at large, can hardly be subject of doubt.[3] Footnote 2: The increase of the breadth of the wheels, though in a greater proportion than that of the weights, is by no means a compensation for it; because the whole breadth in many instances, from the inequality of the ground, or the wheels, will not be brought to bear whenever it can, the first impression must be made by the nails, where they are prominent, perhaps by a single nail; or the bearing may happen upon single pieces of materials, or upon the edges of materials, incapable of supporting the weights. _See Enquiry into the State of the Public Roads, by the Rev._ HENRY HOMER, _A. M. Rector of Birdlingbury, Warwickshire. Published in 1767, Page 66._ It must be observed, that these remarks of Mr. Homer, and of every other writer on the subject of roads, are only applicable to such as are loose, rough, and uneven; and that no one seems to have contemplated the idea of a road being made at once strong, smooth, and solid.—AUTHOR. Footnote 3: Broad-wheeled carriages are found to be so unadapted to the purposes of husbandry, the number of horses requisite for their draught so great, and the beneficial effects of them to the road so questionable, that neither the encouragements on the one hand, nor the discouragements on the other, have been sufficient to bring them into general use. HOMER’S ENQUIRY, Page 25.