380 The Right Hon. Sir John H. A. Macdonald [Feb. 16, 



introduction of railroad transit. In 1838 Sir Henry Parnell, in his 

 Treatise on Roads, declared that—" the attaining of a speed of 25 

 or 30 miles an hour cannot be justified on any principle of national 

 utility — how it can be made to contribute very much to the benefit 

 of the country at large it is not easy to discover." And he added 

 his prophecy : " After the means of moving at the rate of ten miles 

 an hour is universally established, there seems to be no very great 

 advantage to be derived from going faster," and he declares that 

 railway transit cannot possibly pay, so that — " the cheaper method 

 of using horse power will be adopted." One can but smile on read- 

 ing this in the light of what has taken place since. 



That the Council of this Institution should welcome a Paper on 

 the Road, and that you should be here to listen to it, is proof incon- 

 trovertible of the great change. I must apologize for speaking of 

 " a Paper." In Royal Institution parlance, I am delivering a " Dis- 

 course," and it seems natural that it should divide itself into three 

 heads. The first is the Past, and what is to be said upon it may be in- 

 teresting and useful for comparison with head two, the Present, and 

 head three, the Future. 



It is clear from history that the first maker of roads in Britain was 

 the conqueror from Rome. We can see to-day how the invading 

 Roman made solid, strong roads to facilitate the transfer of his forces, 

 thus lessening the time necessary for moving his legions from point 

 to point, and so making one phalanx worth two in many circum- 

 stances of fighting emergency. These roads testify to the skill of 

 the Roman military engineer, solid, strong, well-drained, and with 

 an upper crust of close-laid pavement, thoroughly efficient, an example 

 that later generations were slow to follow. 



After the Roman period, and for hundreds of years, road-making 

 with design was unknown. The State did nothing, and it fell to the 

 Church to do a little, as a work of piety and charity. "We read 

 that in the 14:th century the Bishop of Durham remitted part of 

 the penalties on the sins of those who did good work in helping to 

 " smooth the way of the wanderer," and granted 40 indulgences to con- 

 tributors to road repair. But zeal declined and mud increased. The 

 road user had to be his own road-maker. The poorer class trudged 

 on foot, where now they ride in comfortable carriages and feed in 

 dining-cars, the richer class, kings, queens, nobles, knights, gentry, 

 merchants, rode on horseback, the ladies being sometimes carried on 

 pillions, or by litters, instead of first-class saloous. The pack-horse 

 team was the mode of conveyance for goods. The road was formed 

 by the traffic following the footpaths. To this is to be attributed the 

 very tortuous character of many of our old ways, the jjath-maker 

 naturally moving round obstructions, and the horse following widened 

 the track, which later the road-maker also followed, without straight- 

 ening the line or relieving gradients by cutting and embankment. 

 As was to be expected, roads thus formed at haphazard were soon 



