Roads and Road-making. 87 



some " can " in him, and a little heart to the business, 

 two days' work was thus secured ; so that the sum 

 exacted would seem to have been fairly equivalent to 

 the services that had been given. 



How averse the people were to performing their 

 statute labour, and how little alive to the importance of 

 good roads, is curiously illustrated by such facts as that, 

 while warrant was granted to " poynd deficients con- 

 form to law," at least as early as 1739 no amendment 

 seems to have taken place in their conduct up to 1755, 

 when it was agreed that each Aberdeenshire parish 

 should repair its own roads " as ane expedient to try if 

 the roads will be repaired without commuting the 

 labourer's money, and charge each man in each parish a 

 sixpence in place of the labour they are obliged to give 

 by law." The schoolmasters were instructed to make 

 out lists of all the persons in their parishes liable to 

 statute labour (nearly all the male population between 

 fifteen and seventy years of age, except the ministers 

 and themselves). The precentors were " ordered" not 

 only to announce the statute labour days from the 

 " lateran," but to certify the County Clerk where no 

 application had been made to them on the subject, fail- 

 ing which, they would be " prosecuted forthwith as 

 contemners of the law." The ministers were "entreated 

 to prompt all concerned to forward so good a work that 

 they may be the agreeable instruments of preventing 

 the disagreeable necessity of imposing or incurring the 

 several penalties." 



The highways made by statute labour were of this 

 sort " though the principal roads have been in general 

 lined out so as to mark their direction, and some stones 

 and other obstructions removed out of the way and 

 bogs filled up, yet the roads still continue to be in such 

 a miserable state that unless it be for a few months in 

 summer it is impossible to drive a carriage upon them 

 with more than half an ordinary load." " What has 

 contributed to this evil," we are again told, " is that 



