Describe what improvement of the main road has taken place under your direction, in Woburn?—The whole of the line of the road through Woburn, except about three hundred yards in different places, is on a very strong alluvial clay: the road passes over naked sand, only for three hundred yards; this road had been rendered so sandy and so bad, entirely by bringing soft sand-stone out of Buckinghamshire, at three miles carriage, upon the average, in Woburn, and some of that stone was brought almost to the end of Hockliff Town, where the best gravel abounds. It appeared, from the remains of a number of gravel pits, that there had been formerly a great deal of gravel dug in Woburn; this circumstance I mentioned to the duke of Bedford, and he desired search to be made; and it was ascertained that Woburn might furnish gravel enough, adequate to any purpose. In consequence of which, his Grace directed, when the labourers were much in want of employment, that the poor persons should be employed in preparing a great quantity of gravel for the purposes of this turnpike road. I undertook to direct the taking of this gravel out, and to level the siftings and dirt in a uniform manner, and lay all the soil again upon the top; by which means the land was in no degree injured, but, in fact, considerably benefited, by being loosened to that depth. A great many hundreds of cubic yards of clean-sifted and picked gravel were prepared in numerous square stacks, and the trustees at a meeting, or else their clerk, were informed, that this gravel his Grace offered to the road at the mere cost of labour, without any thing for the gravel, or the temporary damage to the occupiers of the land. After a long time of hesitation, the trustees or their clerk returned an answer, that they did not like that mode, alleging that their surveyor ought to be allowed to dig materials where and how he liked, and they would not have this gravel: it lay there, some of it for two or three years, upon the land. In that time a number of private roads were making of his Grace’s, and a good deal of it was used on these. The main road became progressively worse and worse, and the post-office caused the parish to be indicted. I was then surveyor, and made an application to the trustees, stating the circumstances the road was under: that road-trust is thirteen miles in length, two of which, or rather more, are in the parish of Woburn; there is a toll-gate in the parish which the inhabitants are liable to all the toll of; some of them, even in going and returning to and from their fields: the trustees had exacted very strictly _the half_ of the statute duty, although the parish had, I think, eleven miles of private roads to maintain. I mention this circumstance to show there was no default on the part of the parish; and it was afterwards proved, that they had done their duty; the trustees merely laughed at the application, and said,