166 RAILWAYS, HIGHWAYS, AND C!ANALS. 



What has been mentioned are no doubt the vices of the system, 

 and not the system itself; but really the system is nothing without 

 its vices, and it would be curious to ascertain upon what plea the 

 first knot of individuals came before the legislature, and asked the 

 grave and learned inmates of its two houses, to" league with them 

 (the said knot) against the common interests of that public which 

 they (the inmates of the two houses) were specially appointed and so- 

 lemnly pledged and sworn to protect. It appears, however, that they 

 got seasoned to the practice (what will not time accomplish?) for 

 within the period of ordinary memory, and when there was in the 

 House of Commons, a man at least as vigilant as Hume himself, a 

 bill for converting the revenues of the port of Leith into a rent of 

 heritage for a knot of persons, was sailing smoothly toward the 

 haven of enactment, till a gallant captain, then understood to be a 

 staunch Tory, bore down upon it, and blew all the craft to splin- 

 ters. We could have wished to make an extract from this part of 

 the work ; but the entire passage is too long, and it cannot be 

 abridged without doing injustice to the argument. 



At page 34 which, by the way, ought to have been the commence- 

 ment of a chapter Mr. Grahame proceeds to consider the three 

 species of communications roads, railways, and canals with refe- 

 rence to their general usefulness to the public. Here he shows very 

 clearly, and indeed the matter is nearly self-evident, that the com- 

 mon road is the true path for the public ; the one which, under no 

 circumstances, can be dispensed with, and therfore the one which the 

 legislature, as guardians for the public, are pre-eminently called upon 

 to protect and promote. A road opens up the whole country 

 through which it passes, and answers every purpose of communica- 

 tion to the whole people along its line ; and, as the settlement of the 

 people has followed the lines of the public roads for a very long 

 period of time, the improvement of every line of public road should 

 always be made with due regard to all the people who are to use it, 

 whether for longer or for shorter distances. In the more thinly in- 

 habited parts of the country, where the population is scattered, and 

 there are no towns, the line of road can be made along the most ad- 

 vantageous level ; but in more thickly inhabited districts, it is often 

 impossible wholly to abandon the old line, however bad, without 

 more serious loss to individuals than any public improvement can 

 justify. But even here the restrictions are chiefly confined to making 

 the road touch upon the principal towns, excepting in the case 

 of those of the first class ; and sometimes in the case of these, it is 

 better that the road should pass close by the side of the town than 

 through the middle of it. The pasture from town to town, may 

 thus be considered as one whole, and as such it can never be prac- 

 tically managed by several sets of trustees, because there will always 

 be as many deviations from the best general plan as there are trusts. 



The present system of licensing public-houses, by which a ficti- 

 tious value is given to that description of property beyond Avhat the 

 same quantity of bricks and mortar applied to any other purpose 

 would command, and the fact of the road trustees being often both 

 proprietors and licensers of those houses, have no inconsiderable 



