THE STAGE-WAGGONS 123 



true knight of the road had a certain generous 

 code of morals, and while he rohbed the rich, 

 gave to the needy — a thing perhaps counted to 

 him for righteousness by that recording angel 

 who effaced the record of Uncle Toby's hasty 

 imprecation with a kindly ol3literating tear. 



The general increase of heavy traffic soon after 

 the middle of the eighteenth century did not 

 escape the notice of those responsible for the con- 

 dition of the roads. Incompetent road-surveyors, 

 ignorant of the science of road construction and 

 employing unsuitable materials and unskilled 

 labour, saw the highways they had mended with 

 mud, road-scrapings and gravel continually falling 

 into ruts and sloughs, often from twelve to eighteen 

 inches deep. Seeking any cause for this rather 

 than their ignorance of the first rudiments of 

 construction, they naturally discovered it in the 

 passage of the heavily-weighted waggons, and 

 raised an outcry against them accordingly. To 

 an age that saw no better method of mending the 

 roads than that of raking mud on to them and 

 throwing faggots and boulder-stones upon that basis, 

 this seemed reasonable enough, and Parliament 

 was at length persuaded to authorise discriminatory 

 rates to be imposed by the turn2:)ike trusts upon 

 carts and waggons whose wheels were not of a 

 certain breadth. The argument was that the 

 broader the wheels, the greater would be the dis- 

 tribution of weight, and consequently the road 

 would be less injured. It was an argument based, 

 correctly enough, upon natural laws, and the age 



