THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 119 



hares and rabbits ; the practice of game-preserving 

 followed and grew. The old sport of coursing hares 

 was also continued, and fox-hunting was taken up, at 

 first in a simple way, but later as an important sport 

 directed by wealthy people at an ever-increasing cost. 

 Trade and sport combined to bring new people to the 

 country-side, and there was an increased coming and 

 going which had its effect even on the remote villages. 



The wholesale internal distribution of our food and 

 all the other articles that the nation consumes is, at the 

 present day, carried on either by the luggage 

 The roads. trains, running very often at night, or on 

 canals ; it is all in the background of life. 

 But early in the XVIIIth century all this distribution 

 of goods, by that time a business of growing importance, 

 took place, as it had from the earliest times, either on 

 the rivers or on the highways. It was this distribution 

 of goods, carried mainly by pack-horses or in waggons, 

 and the coming and going of many people, that brought 

 into further prominence the deplorable condition of the 

 roads of England. But while the traders and others 

 who travelled in the first half of the XVIIIth century 

 complained bitterly, the old conditions remained prac- 

 tically unchanged. Travellers were obliged to take the 

 roads as they found them mere strips of rough grass- 

 land and so most people travelled as they had done 

 for many generations, on horseback with their luggage in 

 saddle-bags. Stage-coaches did not begin to come into 

 use until about the middle of the century, and private 

 carriages on country roads remained a rarity even at 

 the end of the century. The parishes, legally bound to 

 repair, adhered to their old policy and did as little as 

 they could for the roads, still objecting to spend their 



