The same authority gives a further picture of the state of the highways some twenty years later, when apparently little improvement had taken place in their condition: "Notwithstanding the numerous Acts of Parliament, of which no less than 452 were emitted between the years 1760 and 1764, for the improvement of the principal highways, they still continued narrow, darkened with trees, and intersected with ruts and miry swamps, through which the progress of a waggon was a work of difficulty and danger. One of these--the turnpike road from Preston to Wigan--is thus described by an angry tourist in 1770, and the picture seems to have been too generally realised over the whole kingdom: "To look over a map, and perceive that it is a principal one, not only to some towns, but even whole counties, one would naturally conclude it to be at least decent; but let me most seriously caution all travellers who may accidentally purpose to travel this terrible country, to avoid it as they would the devil; for a thousand to one but they break their necks or their limbs by overthrows or breakings down. They will here meet with ruts, which I actually measured, four feet deep, and floating with mud only from a wet summer; what, therefore, must they be after a winter? The only mending it receives is the tumbling in some loose stones, which serve no other purpose but jolting a carriage in the most intolerable manner. These are not merely opinions, but facts; for I actually passed three carts broken down in these eighteen miles, of execrable memory."
Obvious as it must be to every mind capable of apprehending ordinary matters in the present day, that the opening up of the country by the laying down of good roads would encourage trade, promote social intercourse, knit together the whole kingdom, and render its government the more easy and effective; yet it is a fact that the improvement of the roads in various parts of the country, both in England and Scotland, was stoutly opposed by the people, even in certain places entailing riot and bloodshed. So strong were the prejudices against the improved roads, that the country people would not use them after being made. This bias may perhaps have partaken largely of that unreasoning conservatism which is always prone to pronounce that that which _is_ is best, and opposes change on principle--an example of which is afforded by the conduct of the driver of the Marlborough coach, who, when the new Bath road was opened, obstinately refused to travel by it, and stuck to the old waggon-track. "He was an old man," he said; "his grandfather and father had driven the aforesaid way before him, and he would continue in the old track till death." Other grounds of objection were not wanting, having some show of reason; but these, like the others, were useless in stemming the tide of improvement which eventually set in, and brought the roads of the nation into their present admirable state.