The reason given why drag-coaches are made with the front wheel so far back is, that it was necessary in order to bring the horses close to their work, to use a phrase that has been much misapplied, and also to bring them under the driver’s hands, who prefers the reins short, but it would be quite possible to build a coach in which the driver might be over the horses, and yet have the advantage of higher front wheels, and properly placed for carrying the load.
The Coachmaker may often gather a useful hint by studying the construction of carts, which have to carry heavier loads than carriages, often at an equal speed, and certainly not with better horses.
If the wheels of a vehicle are of equal height, the load should rest in the middle of the wheels. When the front wheels meet with an obstacle in the road the horse will only have to lift half the weight of the load, the other half being on the hind wheels. When the hind wheels come to the same obstruction again only half the load will have to be lifted, the other half being on the front wheels. But, as in English carriages, the wheels are very rarely of equal height, we should proportion the load more upon the higher wheels than upon the lower. As long ago as 1770 a Coachmaker, named Joseph Jacob, of St. Mary Axe, wrote thus:--“A load should always be placed in a waggon over the highest wheels, and as low as possible.” This was the Mr Jacob who assisted at some experiments made at that time in the Strand, by direction of the Society of Arts, for the purpose of ascertaining the proper height of wheels. Mr Cuthbert Clarke was rewarded with a fifteen guinea gold medal. Mr Jacob had also received a twenty guinea medal for improved carriage springs.
During my lectures I exhibited some full-sized drawings of carriages made by M. Dupont, of Paris, to show how completely a Coachbuilder at a distance might be guided in building carriages by his designs. These drawings are quite works of art, and by means of them M. Dupont is educating the artistic taste of every manufactory which procures his aid. How much better our carriages would be if we worked from drawings as carefully planned out and executed as these. Many of our artisans could, with a little instruction, draw quite as well, and by degrees would learn to draw with as much artistic taste and sense of the beautiful. Some artisans are now being instructed in the art of design, and I trust the day is not far distant when every workman will see that his son learns drawing as part of his education, and as the essential preliminary to any technical education which is to follow. The power of producing on paper the images figured on the brain is an important part and factor in all the arrangements of our social life, whether those images and imaginations, and reasons and problems, are traced with the pen in writing or with the pencil in a drawing, by both we record, we discipline, and we clear up more or less the busy thoughts that nature or surrounding circumstances have gifted and endowed us with. On the Continent, and especially in Paris, this has long been understood, and workmen have been carefully educated for this work. And, thanks to the department of Science and Art of South Kensington, thousands of students have past through the schools of design scattered all over England. If the artisans of the Coach Trade would follow the example of those engaged in the china and pottery trades, they would meet with the same success, and restore their fame for Coachbuilding to its former greatness.