Will you have the goodness to state the principle upon which you prefer that the tolls should be regulated entirely by weights and breadth of wheels, without regard to the number of horses drawing?—Because nothing can be more vague or unsatisfactory, than the latter mode of defining weights, or preventing the carrying of excessive loads, because horses are of such very different degrees of size, condition and strength, and the humanity or otherwise of their drivers are so very different; but more on account of the very great inequality of the different roads of the kingdom, which this general regulation is now made to apply to, as to the number and steepness of the hills: the precautions that have been used, of setting up posts upon the tops and bottoms of those steeps, to define where extra horses may be used, are entirely become useless, comparatively, none of the hills now remain, to any length, with so great a degree of steepness, as to cause it to be worth any one’s while to keep horses stationed there, for the purpose of assisting heavy carriages up those hills for hire; still less has it occurred that any waggoner has spare horses following his waggon, for which he must pay tolls, in order to avail himself of this useless permission, to use any number of horses up the steep hills. Are you of opinion that stage-coaches require, or would admit of any regulation with respect to their wheels or weights?—I am clearly of opinion, that they would not; for in travelling, when it has happened that I could not get a seat on the front of the coach, I have, through many long days, carefully attended to the impression made by the wheels of the carriages upon which I have been travelling (when they have been among the heaviest loaded coaches) and have compared these impressions with those of the carts and waggons, particularly broad-wheeled ones, which we met; from which observations, and other more particular ones, I am of opinion, that the injury done to the roads by the coaches, compared with their utility and the tolls they pay, is not such as to justify any legal restraint on their wheels or weights.