Between 1790, when the Kneesworth toll bar produced about L5 a week, and 1820, there was a considerable increase in the traffic on the roads, and the highest figure reached was in 1828, when the amount realized from the Kneesworth and Caxton toll gates was L1,367 for the year. As coaching declined, the turnpike receipts fell off so much that by 1847 the Kneesworth and Caxton toll-gate receipts had dwindled down, in twenty years, from L1,367 to L282 a year! That the railway did not knock all the horses off the road, but on the contrary brought them on for other purposes, is evident from the fact that after the establishment of a railway station at Royston the above toll-gate receipts went up again in the next twenty years to L600 a year!
The Wadesmill Turnpike Trust (from Royston to Wadesmill) was a much more profitable road, as it included some of the Cambridge as well as the North Road traffic. Indeed, for three years before the London Road hill was cut through, the tolls from Royston to Wadesmill were let to Mr. Flay for L4,090 per annum, and in 1839 after the cutting was finished, they were let for L4,350, the highest sum ever made under this Trust.
With the disappearance of the last of the toll-gates the last relics of the old coaching days vanish. Antiquated such an expedient may seem--placing bars across the road--yet the system did enable some very notable improvements to be carried out in cutting through high hills at an expense which modern highway authorities would never dream of. Then, they not only secured the desirable result that all who used the roads should pay for them, but helped to preserve the balance of trade between towns and villages, for, no sooner were gates abolished than many heavy users of the roads got off almost scot free of contributing to their maintenance, and the town tradesman could afford to send his carts round and compete with, and, as a natural consequence, to annihilate many small village shop-keepers who had flourished under the old _régime_.
NEW WINE AND OLD BOTTLES.--A PAROCHIAL REVOLUTION.--THE OLD POOR-HOUSE AND THE NEW "BASTILLE."
Over the dark night of the 18th and the dull grey morning of the 19th century there was this remarkable feature, that while the local records show how deplorable was the condition of the people, there was at the head of the affairs of the nation a perfect galaxy of great men, such as the public life of this nation had perhaps never known. There were Fox, Pitt, Sheridan, Burke, Wellington, Wilberforce, Nelson, Canning, Brougham, Lord Chancellor Eldon--whose greatness was only tempered by the fear that the sun of Great Britain would set if a Catholic was allowed to sit in the House of Peers,--the Duke of York--whose speech against Catholic emancipation was printed in letters of gold and sold by our local stationers,--the great Lyndhurst (four times Lord Chancellor) Palmerston, Lord Derby, who, from a maiden speech about lighting Manchester with gas, rose to be "the Rupert of Debate," Macaulay--the brilliant Buntingford school boy who went stamping through the fields of literature with an _éclat_ which made him one of the giants of the coming century,--O'Connell, the Liberator; and Grattan, of Irish { 156} Parliament fame. All these great names made up a reflection of the glories of Ancient Greece and Rome in the arena of debate. They shone like stars in the firmament, helping to make the common people content to dwell in the night by the glittering panoply they threw over the public life of the nation. Men and women forgot their grievances in the contemplation of great names whose owners did not then, like the statesmen of to-day, come down to the level of the common life to be jostled on railway platforms.