72 History of Inland Transport 



hours assuming that the vehicle did not stick in the mud. 

 Writing from Kensington in this same year, Lord Hervey 

 said : " The road between this place and London is grown 

 so infamously bad that we live here in the same solitude as we 

 would do if cast on a rock in the middle of the ocean ; and all 

 the Londoners tell us there is between them and us an im- 

 passable gulf of mud." 



Middle ton, again, speaking in his " Survey of Middlesex " 

 of the Oxford Road at Uxbridge, in 1797, says that during 

 the whole of the winter there was but one passable track on it, 

 and that was less than six feet wide, and was eight inches deep 

 in fluid sludge. 



In 1816 the Dublin Society made a grant of ^100 to defray 

 the cost of a series of experiments to be carried out by Richard 

 Lovell Edgeworth at the Society's premises in Kildare Street, 

 Dublin, with a view to ascertaining " the best breadth of 

 wheels, the proper weight of carriages and of burthen, and the 

 best form of materials for roads." Edgeworth's report, 

 published under the title of " An Essay on the Construction of 

 Roads and Carriages " (second edition, 1817), includes, in its 

 introductory matter, a short account of the history and 

 development of roads. After pointing out that before vehicles 

 for the conveyance of goods were in use little more was 

 required than a path on hard ground which would bear horses ; 

 that all marshy grounds were shunned ; that inequalities and 

 circuitous roads were of much less consequence than was the 

 case when carriages, instead of packhorses, began to be 

 employed, he proceeds : 



" When heavier carriages and greater traffic made wider 

 and stronger roads necessary, the ancient track was pursued ; 

 ignorance and want of concert in the proprietors of the ground, 

 and, above all, the want of some general effective super- 

 intending power, continued this wretched practice until 

 turnpikes were established. . . . 



" The system of following the ancient line of road has been 

 so pertinaciously adhered to that roads have been sunk many 

 feet, and in some parts many yards, below the surface of the 

 adjacent ground; so that the stag, the hounds and horsemen 

 have been known to leap over a loaded waggon, in a hollow way, 

 without any obstruction from the vehicle." 



After this the reader will better appreciate the fact that in 



