Remarks on the Present System of Road Making: With Observations, Deduced from Practice and Experience, With a View to a Revision of the Existing Laws, and the Introduction of Improvement in the Method of Making, Repairing, and Preserving Roads, and Defending the Road Funds from Misapplication. Seventh Edition, Carefully Revised, With an Appendix, and Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, June 1823, with Extracts from the EvidenceMcAdam, John Loudon
History
Remarks on the Present System of Road Making: With Observations, Deduced from Practice and Experience, With a View to a Revision of the Existing Laws, and the Introduction of Improvement in the Method of Making, Repairing, and Preserving Roads, and Defending the Road Funds from Misapplication. Seventh Edition, Carefully Revised, With an Appendix, and Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons, June 1823, with Extracts from the Evidence
McAdam, John Loudon
Macadam roads; Roads -- Great Britain
In the session of 1819, a Select Committee was appointed to take into
consideration the Acts in force regarding the Turnpike Roads and
Highways of the Kingdom, and the expediency of additional regulations
for their better repair and preservation. This Committee reported, in
the most decided terms, as to the success of Mr. MᶜAdam’s system. The
following is a short extract from that Report: “The admirable state of
repair into which the roads under Mr. MᶜAdam’s system were brought
attracted very general attention, and induced the commissioners of
various districts to apply for his assistance or advice. The general
testimony borne to his complete success wherever he has been employed,
and the proof that his improvements have been attended with an actual
reduction of expense, while they have afforded the most useful
employment to the poor, induce your Committee to attach a high degree of
importance to that which he has already accomplished. The imitations of
his plans are rendered easy by their simplicity, and by the candour with
which he has explained them, although ability in the surveyor to judge
of their application must be understood as an essential requisite.”
In session 1820, Mr. MᶜAdam presented a petition to Parliament, praying
for the payment of his expenses, and such reward for his services as the
House in its justice and wisdom should think fit to grant. This petition
was referred for consideration to the Select Committee then sitting upon
the state of the Highways, who had the account of Mr. MᶜAdam’s expenses
up to 1814 submitted to them; and from which account it appears, that
the distance travelled by Mr. MᶜAdam was 30,000 miles, and that there
were 1,920 days employed in this service; that reckoning by the rules of
allowance made by the Post Office to their surveyors, the expense of the
above travelling amounted to the sum of 5,019_l._ 6_s._ which sum Mr.
MᶜAdam states to have been expended by him on this service up to August
1814.
Mr. MᶜAdam further states, in his Evidence before the Committee; “This
account is made from memoranda in my possession, and I have made the
same with such care and attention, that I am ready to make oath that it
is to the best of my knowledge and belief correct, whenever I may be
required so to do.” Which he afterwards did in the following terms:
“I, John Loudon MᶜAdam, do hereby voluntarily make oath that the
above-mentioned account delivered by me to the Committee on Turnpike
Roads and Highways, is to the best of my knowledge and belief
correct.”
“Witness my hand this 8th day of March 1821.
(Signed) JNO. LOUDON MᶜADAM.”
“_Sworn before me at Pontefract,_ }
_8th March 1821._ }
(Signed) G. ALDERSON, _Alderman_.”
Your Committee, in their Report of the 18th of July 1820, state as
follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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