About a hundred and ninety years ago, when the first turnpike-road was formed in England, a mob broke the toll-gates, because they thought an unjust tax was being put upon them. They did not perceive that this small tax for the use of a road would confer upon them innumerable comforts, and double and treble the means of employment.
If there were no road, and no bridge, a man would take six months in finding his way from London to Edinburgh, if indeed he found it at all. He would have to keep the line of the hills, in order that he might come upon the rivers at particular spots, where he would be able to jump over them with ease, or wade through them without danger.
When a man has gone up the bank of a river for twelve miles in one direction, in order to be able to cross it, he may find that, before he proceeds one mile in the line of his journey, he has to go along the bank of another river for twelve miles in the opposite direction; and the courses of the rivers may be so crooked that he is really farther from his journey's end at night than he was in the morning.
He may come to the side of a lake, and not know the end at which the river, too broad and deep for him to cross, runs out; and he may go twenty miles the wrong way, and thus lose forty.
Difficulties such as these are felt by every traveller in an uncivilized country. In reading books of travels, in Africa for instance, we sometimes wonder how it is that the adventurer proceeds a very few miles each day. We forget that he has no roads.
Two hundred years ago--even one hundred years ago--in some places fifty years ago--the roads of England were wholly unfit for general traffic and the conveyance of heavy goods. Pack-horses mostly carried on the communication in the manufacturing districts. The roads were as unfit for moving commodities of bulk, such as coal, wool, and corn, as the sandy roads of Poland were thirty years ago, and as many still are. Mr. Jacob, who went upon the continent to see what stores of wheat existed, found that in many parts the original price of wheat was doubled by the price of land conveyance for a very few miles.
In 1663 the first turnpike act, which was so offensive to some of the people, was carried through Parliament. It was for the repair of the "ancient highway and post-road leading from London to York," which was declared to be "very ruinous, and become almost impassable." This was, on many accounts, one of the most important lines of the country. Let us see in what state it was seventeen years after the passing of the act. In the 'Diary of Ralph Thoresby,' under the date of October, 1680, we have this entry:--"To Ware, twenty-miles from London, a most pleasant road in summer, and as bad in winter, because of the depth of the cart-ruts." Take another road a little later. In December, 1703, Charles III., King of Spain, slept at Petworth on his way from Portsmouth to Windsor, and Prince George of Denmark went to meet him there by desire of the Queen. The distance from Windsor to Petworth is about forty miles. In the relation of the journey given by one of the prince's attendants, he states,--"We set out at six in the morning, by torchlight, to go to Petworth, and did not get out of the coaches (save only when we were overturned or stuck fast in the mire) till we arrived at our journey's end. 'Twas a hard service for the Prince to sit fourteen hours in the coach that day without eating anything, and passing through the worst ways I over saw in my life. We were thrown but once indeed in going, but our coach, which was the leading one, and his Highness's body-coach, would have suffered very much, if the nimble poors of Sussex had not frequently poised it, or supported it with their shoulders, from Godalming almost to Petworth, and the nearer we approached the duke's house the more inaccessible it seemed to be. The last nine miles of the way cost us six hours' time to conquer them." From Horsham, the county-town of Sussex, about the beginning of the reign of George III., the roads were never in such a condition as to allow sheep or cattle to be driven on them to the London market; and consequently, there not being sufficient demand at home to give a remunerating price, the beef and mutton were sold at a rate far below the average to the small population in the country, which was thus isolated from the common channels of demand and supply.