82 History of Inland Transport 



certain; but there is an useful medium between the inter- 

 meddling of some of the continental states and that neglect, 

 or, rather, discountenance, which our own throws on numerous 

 matters where its aid would be of use, and which, without 

 that aid, cannct be accomplished. . . . The freedom of uni- 

 versal communication is the object, and it is to little purpose 

 that one portion of a road be good if the other is impassable. 

 It is a national and not a private concern." 



Under the conditions actually brought about it was left 

 for any group of landowners and others in any particular 

 district where better roads were needed to apply to Parliament 

 for an Act authorising them to raise a loan in order to meet 

 the initial cost of making or repairing a road, and to set up 

 gates or bars where they could enforce payment of tolls out of 

 which to recoup themselves for their expenditure and meet 

 the costs of maintenance. Theoretically, these were simply 

 temporary expedients, and the turnpike trustees, having once 

 provided a good road, and got their money back, would take 

 down the toll-gates again, and leave the road for the free use of 

 the public. Hence every Turnpike Act was granted only for 

 a limited period, generally about twenty years, and had to 

 be renewed at the end of that term if, as invariably happened, 

 the debt on the road had not been cleared off, and the need 

 for toll-collection still remained. The cost of procuring the 

 periodical continuance of all these Acts was, in itself, a not 

 inconsiderable burden on the finances of the trusts. In, for 

 example, the twenty-four years from 1785 to 1809, the number 

 of Turnpike Acts, whether new Acts or renewals of old ones, 

 passed by the Legislature was no fewer than 1062. 



One result of the excessive localisation of the turnpike 

 system was that trusts of absurdly large proportions were 

 created to look after absurdly small stretches of road. " The 

 fundamental principle," says a writer in the " Edinburgh 

 Review" for October, 1819, "is always to vest the whole 

 management in the hands of the country gentlemen ; and, as 

 they act gratuitously, it has been the policy of the law to 

 appoint in each act a prodigious number of commissioners 

 frequently from one hundred to two hundred, for the care'of 

 ten or fifteen miles of road ; and thus a business of art and 

 science is committed to a promiscuous mob of peers, squires, 

 farmers and shopkeepers, who are chosen, not for their 



