TRAVELLING IX ENGLAND IN 1770. 



paved road, most infamously bad. Any person would imagine 

 the people of the country had made it with a view to immediate 

 destruction! for the breadth is only sufficient for one carriage; 

 consequently it is cut at once into ruts; and you may easily 

 conceive what a break-down, dislocating road, ruts cut through a 

 pavement must be." 



Nor was the state of the roads in other parts of the north of 

 England better. He says of a road near Newcastle, now super- 

 seded by a railway, " A more dreadful road cannot be imagined. 

 I was obliged to hire two men at one place to support my 

 chaise from overturning. Let me persuade all travellers to 

 avoid this terrible country, which must either dislocate their 

 bones with broken pavements, or bury them in muddy sand. 

 It is only bad management that can occasion such very miser- 

 able roads in a country so abounding with towns, trade, and 

 manufactures." 



Now, it so happens that the precise ground over which 

 Mr. Young travelled in this manner less than eighty years 

 ago is at present literally reticulated with railways, upon which 

 tens of thousands of passengers are daily transported, at a 

 speed varying from thirty to fifty miles an hour, in carriages 

 affording no more inconvenience or discomfort than Mr. Young 

 suffered in 1770, when reposing in his drawing-room in his 

 arm-chair. 



19. Until the close of the last century, the internal transport of 

 goods in England was performed by waggon, and was not only 

 intolerably slow, but so expensive as to exclude every object 

 except manufactured articles, and such as, being of light weight 

 and small bulk in proportion to their value, would allow of a high 

 rate of transport. Thus the charge for carriage by waggon from 

 London to Leeds was at the rate of 131. a ton, being 13$d. per 

 ton per mile. Between Liverpool and Manchester it was forty 

 shillings a ton, or lod. per ton per mile. Heavy articles, such as 

 coals and other materials, could only be available for commerce 

 where their position favoured transport by sea, and, consequently, 

 many of the richest districts of the kingdom remained unpro- 

 ductive, awaiting the tardy advancement of the art of transport. 

 Coals are now carried upon railways at a penny per ton per 

 mile, and, in some places, at even a lower rate. Merchandise, 

 such as that mentioned above, which was transported in 1763 at 

 from I4d. to lod. per mile, is now carried at from 3d. to 4c?., 

 while those sorts which are heavier in proportion to their bulk are 

 transported at 2|(/. per ton per mile. 



But this is not all : the waggon transport formerly practised 

 was limited to a speed which in its most improved state did not 



