320 History of Inland Transport 



in their profits owing to railway competition should be made 

 good by the railway companies ; but although this principle 

 was already being enforced, in effect, in the case of many 

 of the canal companies, it was not adopted in that of the turn- 

 pike trusts. 



The various measures resorted to did no more than afford 

 temporary relief to the trusts, and, in the meantime, the 

 obligation cast upon the community of having to support so 

 inefficient and so wasteful a system was found to be intolerably 

 vexatious and burdensome. 



While some persons were praising turnpikes because of 

 such improvement as they had effected on the roads, the 

 " Gentleman's Magazine " of May, 1749, had spoken of them 

 as " a great disadvantage in our competition for trade with 

 France, where they have excellent roads without turnpikes, 

 which are no small tax on travellers and carriers." Not only 

 were the tolls a tax on all commodities carried by road, but 

 they constituted, to a large extent, an unprofitable tax, 

 because so considerable a proportion of the total amount 

 collected went to the support of officials, contractors, lessees, 

 toll-gate keepers and others, who lived on the system, and so 

 small a proportion after allowing for money wasted was 

 usefully spent to the direct advantage of the traders in 

 facilitating actual transport. The Committee of 1864 con- 

 demned the whole system of turnpike tolls as " unequal in 

 pressure, costly in collection, inconvenient to the public, and 

 injurious as causing a serious impediment to intercourse and 

 traffic." 



In Wales popular dissatisfaction with the great increase 

 of toll-gates had led in 1843-4 to the " Rebecca riots," bands 

 of men 500 strong, their leaders disguised in women's clothes, 

 promenading the roads of Pembrokeshire, Cardiganshire 

 and Breconshire at night and throwing down the offending 

 gates. It was only with considerable difficulty and much 

 bloodshed that the disturbances were eventually suppressed by 

 a strong force of soldiers. A commission appointed to inquire 

 into the matter found there was a genuine grievance, and an 

 Act of Parliament was passed which consolidated the trusts 

 in South Wales, regulated the number of toll-gates there, and 

 provided for the extinction of the debt on the roads by the 

 advance of about ^200,000, at three per cent interest, by the 



