Whether a board of roads, appointed by parliament, meeting once every year, and forming a report of the expense and state of the roads in each county, to be presented to parliament, with such observations as present themselves, as to improvements, or otherwise, taken from general surveys made by persons appointed by them, would be useful, by exciting a spirit of emulation and attention on the part of the different trusts, every member of this honourable Committee is as able, and perhaps more able, to give a disinterested judgment than I am; for I conclude, that if surveys are to be made, engineers will think they have some chance of being selected as the most proper persons to be employed on the occasion, under the board. The state of the roads continue to improve throughout the kingdom. Every friend to his country will be pleased, if the march of this improvement can be accelerated by a moderate reform, and carried into remote corners and parishes, where it appears most to be wanted; but I much question the propriety of such a revolution as would lessen the interest, which, in their present situation, the commissioners ought to feel in the repair of their roads, and the consequence which the appointment tends to give them. If country road-surveyors are appointed throughout the kingdom, the nomination might be with the commissioners of the county, and if friendship or local interest is supposed to operate too far, the nomination, or the examination previous to election, or the _veto_ after it, might be with the central or other board, the members of which might be supposed not to be connected with the individual, in the same way as pilots and the masters of men of war are examined by the elder brethren of the Trinity House. And sub-surveyors or surveyors of parishes, might in the same manner be appointed, or undergo an examination by the county commissioners and county surveyor, to qualify them to be elected; for it is to be lamented, that in cases where parishes have, from the reasons I have mentioned, made the office of road-surveyors permanent, with a salary: the election being popular, has fallen, not upon the candidate who was really the best qualified, but probably upon some honest decayed tradesman, who, having proved himself unable to manage his own business, which he ought to have known the best, has thereby, and by his long residence, qualified himself for managing a public business, of which he probably knows nothing, but whether he does, or does not, rarely enters into the consideration of the majority of the voters.