Decline of Turnpikes 321 



Public Works Loan Commissioners, to be repaid by ter- 

 minable annuities within thirty years. The loan was duly 

 paid off by 1876. 



Inasmuch as English traders and travellers simply grumbled 

 and paid, and refrained from demonstrating as the more 

 emotional Welshmen had done, they had to wait longer for 

 any material relief from the grievances from which they, also, 

 were suffering. 



Down to 1864 the duty of deciding in what order turnpike 

 Acts should be permitted to expire, instead of being renewed, 

 was, as Mr George Sclater- Booth (Lord Basing), formerly 

 President of the Local Government Board, informed the 

 Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Highway Acts, 

 when giving evidence before them in 1880, one of the functions 

 of the Home Office, and the Home Office, he said, " was timid 

 at that time in allowing these turnpike trusts to lapse." 

 Pressure was brought to bear on the department with a view 

 to effecting a more rapid extinction of the trusts ; though the 

 ratepayers had not then realised the results to themselves of 

 the cost of maintenance of disturnpiked roads being thrown 

 on the parish. 



Following on the report of a Special Committee of the House 

 of Commons, recommending that the Turnpike Acts should 

 be allowed to expire as rapidly as possible, a House of Commons 

 Turnpike Committee was appointed in 1864 to take over the 

 whole business from the Home Office. Thenceforward this 

 Committee prepared every year a schedule of turnpike trusts 

 which they thought should expire, the schedule being em- 

 bodied in an annual Turnpike Acts Continuance Bill which 

 was duly passed by Parliament. So great was the zeal shown 

 by the Committee that from 1864 roads were disturnpiked at 

 the rate of from 1000 to 1700 or 1800 miles a year. " This," 

 said Mr Sclater-Booth, " has been most distinctly the policy 

 of representative members of the House of Commons, and not 

 the policy of the Government of the day, except in so far 

 as the Government of the day has foreborne to exercise any 

 interference with the Turnpike Continuance Act in Parlia- 

 ment." 



While the reduction in the number of turnpike trusts had 

 been an undoubted boon to users of the roads, it had thrown 

 heavy burdens on the local ratepayers. For a period of a 



