Decline of Turnpikes 319 



All the same, and in spite of the greater road traffic, the 

 financial difficulties into which the trusts drifted and the 

 burdensome nature of the tax imposed by the toll-system 

 on traders, agriculturists and the public were beyond all 

 doubt. 



Various attempts were made to improve the position of the 

 trusts. 



A Committee of the House of Commons recommended in 

 1821 that Continuance Bills for the periodical renewal of 

 Turnpike Acts should be exempted from fees. Another Com- 

 mittee made a like recommendation in 1827, and subsequently 

 a measure was passed scheduling in an annual public statute 

 the continuation of any trusts on the point of expiring. 



Then, as there was so obviously an excessive number of 

 trusts, with a consequent undue expenditure on management, 

 a Committee which sat in 1820 strongly recommended the 

 consolidation of turnpike trusts around London. An Act 

 consolidating those on the north of the Thames was passed, 

 the preamble thereof reciting no fewer than 120 other Acts of 

 Parliament which the new measure superseded. 



In 1833, 1836 and 1839 other Committees recommended 

 a general consolidation of trusts ; but little, apparently, was 

 done in this direction in England, though in several counties of 

 Scotland, as mentioned in the Report of the Select Committee 

 of 1864, the system was greatly improved by the appointment 

 of Road Boards which, by a consolidation of various trusts and 

 the association of several counties for the repair and main- 

 tenance of roads, effected a material diminution in the ex- 

 penses. In Ireland, also, the abolition of the system of 

 statute labour in 1763, the placing of the business of road- 

 making under the control of the grand juries, and the meeting 

 both of the cost of road repairs and the payment of interest on 

 the existing debts out of the rates of the counties and baronies 

 led to better roads being provided at a less burdensome cost. 



By a General Turnpike Act passed in 1841, justices were 

 authorised, on proof being given to them of a deficiency in 

 the revenue of a turnpike trust, to order the parish surveyor 

 to pay to the trust a portion of the highway rates, to be laid 

 out in actual repairs on parts of the turnpike road within the 

 parish. 



Bondholders petitioned Parliament that any deficiency 



