74 History of Inland Transport 



Season on Horseback, or, if in Carriages, by winding Deviations 

 from the regular tracks, which the open country afforded them 

 an Opportunity of making. . . . The natural Produce of the 

 Country was with Difficulty circulated to supply the Necessi- 

 ties of those Counties and trading Towns, which wanted, and 

 to dispose of the superfluity of others which abounded. Ex- 

 cept in a few Summer-Months, it was an almost impracticable 

 Attempt to carry very considerable quantities of it to remote 

 Places. Hence the Consumption of the Growth of Grain as well 

 as of the inexhaustible stores of fuel, which Nature has 

 lavished upon particular Parts of our Island, was limited to 

 the Neighbourhood of those Places which produced them ; 

 and made them, comparatively speaking, of little value to 

 what they would have been, had the Participation of them 

 been enlarged. 



" To the Operation of the same Cause must also be attri- 

 buted, in great Measure, the slow Progress which was formerly 

 made in the Improvement of Agriculture. Discouraged by the 

 Expence of procuring Manure, and the uncertain Returns, 

 which arose from such confined Markets, the Farmer wanted 

 both Spirit and Ability to exert himself in the Cultivation of 

 his Lands. On this Account Undertakings in Husbandry 

 were then generally small, calculated rather to be a Means 

 of Subsistence to particular Families than a Source of Wealth 

 to the Publick." 



Postlethwayt's authority on the roads of Sussex declared 

 that their condition at that time (1745) " hardly admits the 

 country people to travel to markets in winter, and makes 

 corn dear at the market because it cannot be bought, and 

 cheap at the farmer's house because he cannot sometimes 

 carry it to market." This fact is confirmed by G. R. Porter, 

 who, in his " Progress of the Nation " (1846), gives the 

 authority of an inhabitant of Horsham, Sussex, then lately 

 living, for the tradition that at one time sheep or cattle could 

 not be driven to the London market at all from Horsham, 

 owing to the state of the roads, and had to be disposed of 

 in the immediate neighbourhood, so that " under these 

 circumstances a quarter of a fat ox was commonly sold for 

 about fifteen shillings, and the price of mutton throughout the 

 year was only five farthings the pound." 



Irt Devonshire the Rev. James Brome, who published in 



