Today Thomson Mason, burgess for Stafford County, presented the Potomac navigation bill to the house on behalf of the committee. The bill, which authorized a public subscription to finance the project, was received, read, and ordered to be engrossed for final action (JHB description begins H. R. McIlwaine and John Pendleton Kennedy, eds. Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia. 13 vols. Richmond, 1905–15. description ends , 1770–72, 297; HENING description begins William Waller Hening, ed. The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619. 13 vols. 1819–23. Reprint. Charlottesville, Va., 1969. description ends , 8:570–79). Later this day the burgesses passed a public road act which included a provision authorizing the county courts of Fairfax, Loudoun, Berkeley, and Frederick to impose special levies on their inhabitants for the next three years, to finance repair of the public roads leading from Alexandria and Colchester to the Shenandoah Valley. These roads, it was noted in the act, had been “rendered almost impassible” by “the great number of waggons which use the same,” and the normal method of maintaining them entirely by local laboring tithables had proved to be “insufficient” (JHB description begins H. R. McIlwaine and John Pendleton Kennedy, eds. Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia. 13 vols. Richmond, 1905–15. description ends , 1770–72, 299; HENING description begins William Waller Hening, ed. The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619. 13 vols. 1819–23. Reprint. Charlottesville, Va., 1969. description ends , 8:549–51).