Decline of Turnpikes 315 



preceding Sessions ninety turnpike trusts, seeking renewal of 

 their Acts, had asked for authority to increase their tolls on 

 the ground that they could not pay their debts without the 

 assistance of Parliament. The alternative to an increase of 

 tolls was carried so far that it became customary for the 

 trusts to set up a toll-gate wherever there was the slightest 

 excuse for so doing. 



" In some places," says J. Kearsley Fowler, in " Records of 

 Old Times," " as, for instance, my native town of Aylesbury, 

 the place was literally hemmed in like a fortified city, not even 

 an outlet to exercise a horse without paying a toll." There 

 were, he tells us, seven different trusts to maintain at Aylesbury 

 alone. 



Mr George Masefield, a solicitor residing at Ledbury, 

 Herefordshire, said when giving evidence before the Select 

 Committee on Turnpike Trusts in 1 864 that in the twenty-one 

 miles between Ledbury and Kingston, a journey he frequently 

 made, he had to go through eight turnpike gates. In the 

 eight miles' journey to Newent he passed through four gates 

 and paid three times ; and in the thirteen miles to Worcester 

 he went through six gates and paid at five. 



In Gloucestershire, said the " Morning Star " of September 30, 

 1856, "it sometimes happens you have to pay five turnpikes 

 in twelve miles " ; though such were the inequalities of the 

 burden that in some other counties, said the same paper, one 

 could go for miles without paying anything. 



These inequalities had been previously pointed out in the 

 " Westminster Review " article. In speaking of the practice 

 followed in the location of turnpikes, the writer declared that 

 " gates are sometimes placed so as to tax one portion and 

 exempt another, so as to make strangers and travellers pay, 

 while those who chiefly profit by the roads, and who destroy 

 them most, are exempted." He further said that " the Welsh, 

 with their characteristic cunning, have contrived to exempt 

 their own heavy carts and to levy their tolls on the light 

 barouches of unlucky visitors " ; that one might see, in 

 Scotland, three toll-gates, and all to be paid, in the space of 

 a hundred yards ; that one might, as against this, ride thirty 

 miles without paying one toll ; and that " the inhabitants 

 of Greenwich pay the tolls for the half of Kent." 



London in 1818 had twelve turnpike trusts for 210 miles of 



