No. 4.] COUNTRY KOADS. 229 



and allow no earthy admixtures, is the key-note of his 

 testimony. 



In a time of general depression, with road management 

 cut into small "trusts," administered by the inefficient and 

 dishonest, he gave starving cottagers work at their own 

 doors, and for the first time in English history made easy 

 communication possible throughout the kingdom. That 

 small middle-men, contractors, local ignobles, and even 

 engineers, whose trade he was giving back to the people, 

 were jealous of and misrepresented such a figure in road 

 history as that, cannot be doubted. 



As for a " system," M'Adam had none. He looked at his 

 work, and did the best he could for it in each case. His son 

 James, — who afterwards accepted the baronetcy the father 

 refused,. — when asked by Parliament if he worked under 

 his father's "system," preferred to say, "on my father's 

 principles for making roads." M'Adam's road-principles 

 were new road-brooms of fresh ideas for sweeping every 

 corner of the Commonwealth, displacing the venal agents 

 of an ignorant government. His youth was spent in America, 

 and he seems to have carried the best of our revolution home 

 with him. 



M'Adam's own statement was this : — 



' ' In every road I have been obliged to alter the manage- 

 ment, according to the situation and sometimes according to 

 the finances." 



He tried to break existing systems, and to induce road- 

 men and governments to look at things as they were, and do 

 whatever was necessary. It was the printer's title to his col- 

 lected pamphlets that gave him the repute of a " system." 



For the much-mooted question of the size of road-stone 

 he had this settlement, as applicable now as then : — 



"If you made the road of all six-ounce stone it would be a 

 rough road, but it is impossible but that the greater part of 

 the stone must be under that size." 



Six-ounce or egg-sized stone were as large as he wanted 

 the largest stones to be in the top four inches of the roads 

 he mended. In breaking all to that weight, or below, there 

 would certainly be plenty of stone chips. No thought of 

 a porous texture could have been in his mind. That any 



