Gazette Of The United States And Daily Evening Advertiser

From a Correspondent.

Public Money expended for Colleges, Schools, Canals, Bridges, Roads, &c. may have been sometimes wastefully or unskilfully applied. But on the whole, has any expence ever been more fruitful of blessings to mankind? Blessings which increase as they descend to posterity and become the parents of new improvements. Wars that waste the earth are seldom allowed to languish for want of money, yet such grants of public money as make the world the better, and the men in it the wiser and happier are generally unpopular, such grants are generally starved."

Those who think it too much to pay for Roads, Schools and Colleges, would do well to consider whether it would be a good bargain for society, to sell these improvements for the sums they cost.

Why then should not our Legislatures have the thanks and applauses of the country when they assist such improvements? Waving any remarks on other undertakings, the improvement of our public Roads is one of the objects that should be systematically pursued. Bad roads are in effect a Land Tax. They are the worst of all taxes, because they prevent produce being raised. For if produce cannot be sent to market with a profit, it will not be raised. The charge of bad roads falls in the first instance, and in the end principally on the farmers, and amounts on all the great roads to three or four times the charge that would make good roads.

Let this plain truth be well weighed: bad roads are dearer than good.