rammed, and such of the stones as appear to ram loose, should be taken out and replaced by others; after this the joints are to be filled up with fine gravel, and if it can be done conveniently, the stability of the work will be increased by well watering at night the part that has been done during the day, and ramming it over again next morning. The surface of the pavement is then to be covered with an inch or so of fine gravel, that the joints may be always kept full, and that the wheels may not come in contact with the stones while they are at all loose in their places. I have found great advantage from filling up the joints with lime-water, or from mixing a little of the parings or chippings of iron, or small scraps of iron hoop, with the gravel used in filling up the joints of the paving. The water would very soon create an oxide of iron, and form the gravel into a species of rock.'-Evidence, p. 46.

To those who are frightened at the expense of paving, we would recommend the following passage.

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'If the traffic upon the gravelled road (continues Mr. Walker) is at all considerable, the saving of the expense of carriage will be found to very great, when compared with the cost of paving. If the annual tonnage upon the Commercial Road is taken at 250,000 tons, and at the rate of only 3s. per ton from the Docks, it could not be done under 4s. 6d.; say, however, 4s., or 1s. per ton difference, making a saving of £12,500, or nearly the whole expense of the paving in one year. I think I am under the mark in all these figures.'

We have insensibly allowed the operative part of our subject to occupy so many of our pages, that we have left but little space for the legislative enactments which may be deemed expedient. The Committee professes to have confined its attention to turnpike roads. Its principal suggestions are

1st. The appointment of county or district surveyors.

2d. The union of the several trusts within 10 miles of London. 3d. The combining into one general code or digest all the enactments relating to highways.

With respect to the first of these, the Committee recommends empowering the magistrates of every county, assembled at quarter-sessions, to appoint one or more surveyors-general, who shall have the superintendence and management of the turnpike roads within the county, under the authority and direction of the commissioners of the different trusts, to be paid by an uniform rate per mile upon all the roads within the county; to be fixed by the magistrates at quarter-sessions, and paid from the funds of their respective trusts.

In the next place, the Committee

'Express to the house their strong recommendation, that a special act of parliament be passed for uniting all the trusts within a distance of about ten miles round London under one set of commissioners, It is to these roads that the heaviest complaints made by the coach

masters

masters and the surveyor of mail-coaches principally apply; and whether an improvement is to be effected by the importation of flint, and other common materials, or by laying granite pavement in the centre or sides of the roads, it is evident that the measure, to be performed in an economical and efficient manner, must be done upon an extended scale; it must become one interest, directed by one select body of men, of weight, ability, and character.'—Report, p. 9.

Upon the plan of endeavouring to embody in one act of parliament all that is valuable in the old laws with the addition of such new regulations as are acknowledged to be desirable, (as suggested by the Committee of 1811,) the Committee do not hesitate to avow their opinion, that, unless this task, however arduous, be accomplished, the law relating to roads must remain in an incomplete, uncertain, and inconvenient state; they cannot doubt (they say) that the House will agree with them that the promotion of such a measure is deserving of legal assistance on the part of his Majesty's government, to those who are desirous to apply their time and attention to the undertaking.' These suggestions have our unqualified approbation; and we shall rejoice to see them carried into effect.

'A general commutation for statute labour,' recommended by the Committee as well as by Messrs. M'Adam, Edgeworth, and Walker would, we think, be a desirable, measure in itself. Mr. M'Adam says that if it were commuted for even half the real value, it would still be a great advantage to the public. We doubt, however, whether it would not be regarded by the majority of the farmers, who have so many claims upon their purses already, in the light of a new tax.

The Committee, as we have seen, have hitherto confined their attention to turnpike roads; we sincerely hope that they will extend it to public highways of every description. We have, it is true, often cause to complain of the unskilfulness and negligence of surveyors on turnpike roads, but it is in the nature of things that these faults should be found in a still greater degree in the surveyors of parishes. Indeed we have little hesitation in affirming that it is to such neglect that one-third at least of the turnpike acts owe their existence. Mr. Walker, whose evidence throughout evinces a perfect knowledge of every thing connected with his profession, observes very properly,

The case of parish roads is still worse, where the inhabitants are, without much regard to their habits of life, obliged in their turns to serve the annual office of surveyor of the highways. If such persons mean to signalize themselves during their being in office, the first step is often to undo what their predecessor has done, or has not perfected; and the love of self and of friends determines them to make sure while they have it in their power, that some favoured roads or lanes are put

into

into proper order. If the surveyor is, on the contrary, an unwilling officer, or if the attention to his own affairs prevents him giving his time to the duties of the office, he avoids the fine by accepting the charge, pays the bills and wages without much knowledge of their nature and accuracy, and one of the labourers becomes in fact the road-surveyor; but in every case of annual nomination there is this evil, that, as soon as the surveyor has, by a year's apprenticeship, begun to know something of the nature of the business, his place is filled by another, who comes in for the same time to take lessons at the expense of the parish.'-Evidence, p. 51.

The surveyor is not unfrequently a man who makes his sense of public duty subordinate to private advantage, or to feelings of good neighbourhood. Consequently when the weather is too wet to allow of the ordinary operations of husbandry, the farmer's teams are sent to ruin the roads under pretence of repairing them; much of the time is wasted, and not unfrequently some portion of the stones dug and carted at the expense of the parish is shot down in the gateways-perhaps in the farm-yard-of the reluctant performer of statute-duty. The surveyor now and then complains: but, if the culprit is his friend, his courtesy prevents him from remedying the abuse; and if a village rival, he will not do it lest he should appear to be actuated by vindictive motives. For the redress of grievances arising from the remissness of parish surveyors, the public look to the rural guardians of the laws. These gentlemen perhaps expostulate and threaten; but their expostulations and threats are received with civility and promises of amendment, and then treated with neglect. Perhaps the justice is fond of the sports of the field, and fears that any strictness of regime on the subject of roads might tend to the destruction of foxes, or to the diminution of his stock of hares and pheasants; animals against which the farmer has no light cause of quarrel on other scores. Or he is a quiet and peaceable man, who cannot bring himself to incur, however undeservedly, the imputation of being an agitator; a disturber of the stagnant tranquillity of the neighbourhood. For these and similar reasons, we anxiously wish to see all the parish highways placed under the superintendence of a district surveyor of skill and integrity, free from the influence of local interests and local feelings.*

In the event of any new highway legislation, we would humbly suggest that some protection ought to be given to footways in parish

*It might be desirable to empower any petty sessions, acting for a division consisting of two or three hundreds, in case of the roads being much neglected, to appoint a surveyor for such district; remunerating him by proportional payments from the several parishes included in it, and giving him either the sole management of the roads, or merely a controlling power over the parish surveyors. An act to this effect was, we believe, all but passed in 1816. We trust that the promoters of the measure will not be discouraged.

roads.

roads. Many such have been recently formed either by the public spirit of individuals, or by parishes at a loss for employment for their poor; but they are out of the protection of the law, and at the mercy of every mischievous wight who thinks proper, in the insolence of his heart, to drive or ride upon them. Those by the side of turnpike roads are protected by pecuniary penalties; and we know not why a similar protection is not also extended to the parish footways.

ART. V.-1. Proceedings in Purga, and the Ionian Islands, with a Series of Correspondence and other justificatory Documents.— By Lieut. Colonel C. P. de Bosset. 1819.

2. Exposé des Faits qui ont précedé et suivi la Cession de Parga; Ouvrage écrit originairement en Grec par un Parganiote, et traduit en Français par un de ses Compatriotes; publié par Amaury Duval, Membre de l'Institut Royal de France.Paris. 1820.

OF all the people on earth the English feel most sensibly any act of outrage or injustice committed, or supposed to be committed, by the government or its agents; and no other nation has so many facilities of giving scope to those feelings, and of making its indignation heard in every corner of the globe. The speeches in Parliament, the reports of them (not always correct) in the daily newspapers, and the comments of their editors, heightening or palliating the subjects, as may suit their own party-views, or the state of the public mind, rarely permit any act of the government to pass unnoticed. This is as it should be in a free state, and what a generous and highminded people have a right to expect; but it is not as it should be, to abuse the public feeling by garbled and incorrect statements, by misrepresenting facts, ascribing false motives, and, above all, by letting out part only of the truth, and suppressing the

rest.

Few questions of minor importance have been more generally misrepresented and more completely misunderstood than that which relates to the measures adopted by the British government, in regard to the restoration of Parga to the Sublime Porte. That there should prevail on the part of our countrymen a strong feeling of regret at the necessity of a measure, which made the inhabitants of a little state abandon for ever their native place, is no more than might be looked for from them, in favour of the weak and unfortunate, without any knowledge of the particular merits of the case: but this amiable bias, however laudable in itself, has in the present instance been most grossly abused by a strange perversion of circumstances, from sheer malevolence on the one hand, (at least

we

we can devise no other motives,) and political hostility on the other. The effect has been precisely that which was intended; and that conduct, which really was, and ought to have been viewed as a striking instance of the extent of British liberality, humanity and consideration for the unfortunate, has, with a singular degree of mischievous industry, both at home and abroad, been tortured into a breach of national faith, a dereliction of the true and established maxims of policy, and a wanton or thoughtless sacrifice of au innocent and meritorious people, to whom we were bound by every of justice and humanity.

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A plain statement of the proceedings respecting Parga, collected from those officers on the spot, on whose honour and character we can fully rely, and from such official documents as have been made public, will, we are confident, convince every unprejudiced mind, that a feeling of kindness for the inhabitants of Parga influenced every measure of the British government; and that the same principle invariably guided the conduct of Sir Thomas Maitland, on whom devolved the difficult and delicate task of carrying these measures into execution.

When Sir Charles Monck opened that furious battery in the House of Commons, which had been charged and pointed for him by a foreigner resident in London,* or, as it is more delicately expressed below, by a person who was not a British subject,' the name of Parga vibrated for the first time perhaps on the ears of the greater part of the members of that august assembly.-In vain did they consult their Guthries and their Pinkertons-these geographers were profoundly silent on the subject of this barren rock, which had swollen at once into such importauce.-But we must hasten to our subject. To bring the facts of the case under a clear and ample view, we shall first state the nature and origin of our connexion with Parga.

The present town of Parga had no existence before the irruption of the Mahommedans into Greece, which happened about the end of the fourteenth century, though it is pretended that its name was taken from some former town called Hypargos, on account of its dependance on Argos. According to Miletius, Paleo-Parga, or old Parga, contained a greater number of inhabitants than any other in the Thesprotian division of Epirus; but of this-etiam

"The Pargiots, who were now reduced to the greatest distress, sent over a statement of their case, with the necessary documents, to be laid before the British Parliament; but having addressed them to a person who was not a British subject, he did not think himself entitled to make any formal application in their name, though we have reason to believe, that the notice which has been taken of their case in Parliament originated in this communication.'-Edinburgh Review.

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