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 conclusion, your Committee desire to state it as their opinion, that
the value of Mr. MᶜAdam’s system, and consequently of his services, by
no means appears to its full extent upon the roads under the immediate
management of himself, or of his sons; but that the effect produced upon
a considerable portion of the roads generally throughout the Kingdom,
since the adoption of his system, has been manifest, and, as your
Committee conceive, too apparent to escape the most common or
indifferent observer; and further, that it must be obvious, from past
experience, that a system from which so much good has been already
derived, would, if extended over the whole face of the Kingdom, be
productive of the most beneficial consequences both to the condition of
the roads, and in effecting a reduction of the amount of the present
enormous and improvident expenditure.
Your Committee would therefore strongly recommend to the House the
consideration of the subject of making and managing the roads of the
Kingdom in the course of the ensuing Session of Parliament, feeling
convinced that whatever plausible appearance the plan may assume of
appointing a large number of noblemen, gentlemen, farmers, and
tradesmen, Commissioners of Roads, that the practice has everywhere been
found to be at variance with the supposed efficiency of so large a
number of irresponsible managers; and that the inevitable consequences
of a continuance of this defective system will be, to involve the
different trusts deeper in debt, and leave the roads without funds to
preserve them in proper order.
Your Committee cannot close their Report without directing the attention
of the House to that part of Mr. James MᶜAdam’s evidence, in which he
states the practicability of converting the pavement of the streets of
London into smooth and substantial roads; and your Committee have the
satisfaction to inform the House that the experiment is about to be
tried in two very different and distinct parts of the Metropolis, viz.
in St. James’s Square, and over Westminster Bridge and its boundary.
This most desirable improvement has, as appears from the evidence of Mr.
MᶜAdam, senior, and from that of Mr. William MᶜAdam, already been tried,
and completely succeeded (as is well known to many members of the House)
both at Bristol and Exeter, and is in progress of execution upon the
paved ways in the county of Lancaster.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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