126 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



required for this engine of his. It never came 

 into use, nor did the rival invention of another 

 amiable theorist meet a better fate. This device 

 set out to deal with the problem of soft and 

 rutted roads by fixing heavy iron rollers under 

 the frame of a waggon. While the vehicle 

 progressed along good roads these rollers were 

 not l^rought into contact with the ground, but as 

 soon as the wheels began to sink into foul and 

 miry ways, the rollers came into touch with the 

 surface, and at the same time prevented any 

 further sinking and flattened out all irregularities. 

 Turnpike roads, being then things "new- 

 fangled " and unusual, were of course disapproved 

 of by all that very numerous class who distrust 

 any change. Doubtful of their own ability to 

 hold their own in any order of things newer than 

 that in whicli they have been brought up, any 

 change must to them be for the worse. The 

 waggoners to a man were numbered in this class, 

 and, apart from the tolls to be paid on the new 

 roads, objected to them as new. An entertaining 

 contributor to the Gentleman s Magazine in 1752 

 consulted " the most solemn waggoner " he could 

 find between London and Bath. This was one 

 " Jack Whipcord," Avho, like every one else, pre- 

 ferred to go round by "a miserable waggon-track 

 called ' E-amsbury Narrow Way.' Jack's answer 

 was, that roads had but one object — namely, 

 waggon-driving ; that he required but five feet 

 width in a lane (which he resolved never to quit), 

 and all the rest might go to the devil. That the 



