The Age of Bad Roads 75 



1726 a narrative of " Three Years Travels in England, Scot- 

 land, and Wales," found the fanners carrying their corn on 

 horseback, the roads being too narrow to allow of the use of 

 waggons. 



Altogether the need for improved facilities for inland 

 communication in the interests alike of travellers and of 

 traders was great beyond all question, and there was un- 

 limited scope for the operation of such improvement as was 

 represented by the turnpike system, now coming into vogue. 



It was, however, not so much the general needs of the 

 country as the rebellion in Scotland in 1745, accompanied by 

 such disasters for the Royalist troops as their defeat at Preston 

 Pans, which had led the Government to pay special attention to 

 the subject of road-making and road-improvement. Between 

 1726 and 1737 General Wade, employing in summer about 

 500 soldiers on the work, had constructed in Scotland itself 

 some 250 miles of what were, in point of fact, military roads, 

 being designed as a means of reducing disorder in that country. 

 The communications between Scotland and England still 

 remained, however, very defective, and, though English 

 cavalry and artillery had gone forward bravely enough when 

 the rebellion broke out, they found roads that, apart altogether 

 from any question of fighting on them, were not fit for them 

 even to move upon ; so that while the troops from the south 

 were hampered and delayed by the narrow tracks, the ruts 

 and the bogs which impeded their advance, the enemy, 

 more at home in these conditions, had all the advantage. 



No sooner, therefore, had the rebellion been overcome than 

 the Government, recognising that, even if turnpikes were set 

 up along the roads on the border between Scotland and 

 England, the tolls likely to be raised there would be wholly 

 inadequate for the purpose, themselves took in hand the work 

 of road construction and improvement ; and this action gave 

 impetus to a movement for improving roads in England and 

 Wales generally. 



Down to this time the turnpike system had undergone very 

 little development. For a quarter of a century after it had 

 been applied, by the Act of 1663, to the Great North Road, 

 no Turnpike Acts at all were sought. A few were then obtained, 

 but until the middle of the eighteenth century, at least, even 

 if not still later, travellers from Edinburgh to London met 



