CHAPTER XII. 



ROADS AND ROAD-MAKING STATUTE LABOUR MILITARY 



ROADS FIRST TURNPIKES. 



IN no department of social economics has progress been 

 more signally manifested within the comparatively 

 recent past than in the department of roads and means 

 of locomotion. It has been said, and truly enough > 

 that the past half-century, or thereby, has witnessed a 

 greater advance in the facilities for rapid locomotion 

 than all the intervening centuries back to the era of the 

 Pharaohs had witnessed. It is just the difference be- 

 tween the speed of the horse going by " posts," as was 

 done in the days of Ahasuerus, king of Medo-Persia, 

 and the speed of the express train in the days of Vic- 

 toria, Queen of Great Britain. At the former date, 

 they could no doubt keep up to at least eight miles an 

 hour on a long journey ; and when George Stephenson 

 practically tested his "Socket" engine in A. D. 1829, 

 little if anything more had been accomplished in the 

 way of accelerated speed ; and as George had occasion 

 to know it was not deemed credible that the speed 

 mentioned could be safely increased to twelve miles an 

 hour. During all the years that have elapsed since the 

 present century began, however, the country has been 

 traversed, to a moderate extent at least, by fairly 

 passable roads. Over a large part of the eighteenth 

 century it was very different. Passable roads were 

 scarcely known ; and the bulk of traffic of the heavier 

 sort that went on (as well as mere personal touring) 

 was almost incredibly small. Think of " the whole 

 intercourse between Edinburgh and Glasgow" being 



