In 1773, one James Sharp, of Leadenhall Street, advertised his invention of a “rolling waggon,” whose rollers (in place of wheels) were of this breadth of sixteen inches, and proceeded to state that “two late Acts of Parliament” allowed all carriages moving upon rollers of that gauge to be drawn by any number of horses or cattle, and further, that they were allowed to carry eight tons in summer and seven in winter, and to pass toll-free for the term of one year from Michaelmas 1773, and after that time to pay only half toll. Clearly, then, in the great mass of legislation for roads and traffic there was then a limit existing for loads and for teams. It only remained for the wisdom of the time to enact laws giving a bonus to every waggon whose wheels exceeded a breadth of two feet--thus making every such vehicle its own road-repairer--for the absurdity to be complete. There had, indeed, already arisen a bright genius with a somewhat similar idea, for in 1763 Bourne published his design of a four-wheeled waggon whose front axletree was to be so much shorter than the hind one that the foremost wheels would make a track inside the hinder. The breadth of wheel, indeed, was not to be more than fifteen inches, but the combined breadth of all four planned thus would flatten out no less than a five-foot width of road, and the heavier the contents of the waggon, so much better for the proper rolling of the way. But this ingenious person took no account of the extra difficulty of haulage, and the consequently larger teams that would be required for this engine of his. It never came into use, nor did the rival invention of another amiable theorist meet a better fate. This device set out to deal with the problem of soft and rutted roads by fixing heavy iron rollers under the frame of a waggon. While the vehicle progressed along good roads these rollers were not brought into contact with the ground, but as soon as the wheels began to sink into foul and miry ways, the rollers came into touch with the surface, and at the same time prevented any further sinking and flattened out all irregularities.