12 



street system, intelligently adapted to the requirements which he would 

 have been certain to anticipate ; as w T ell as those which were already 

 pressing, it would have relieved the city of London of an incalculable 

 expenditure which has since been required to mend its street arrange, 

 ments ; would have greatly lessened the weight of taxation, which soon 

 afterwards rose to be higher than in any other town of the kingdom, 

 and would have saved millions of people from the misery of poverty 

 and disease. 



Although in a very few years after the rebuilding of the city, its 

 commerce advanced so much as to greatly aggravate the inconveniencies 

 under which street communication had been previously carried on, the 

 difficulties were allowed to grow greater and greater for fully a century 

 more before anything was done calculated to essentially alleviate them. 

 They seem to have been fully realized and to have been constantly de. 

 plored, nor were efforts of a certain kind wanting to remedy them : the 

 direction of these efforts, however, shows how strongly a traditional 

 standard of street convenience yet confused the judgment even of the 

 most advanced. A town being; still thought of as a collection of 

 buildings all placed as closely as possible to one centre w T as also re- 

 garded as a place of necessarily inconvenient confinement, and there- 

 fore, of crowding, hustling and turbulence. An enlargement of the 

 population of a town could only aggravate all the special troubles 

 and dangers to which those living in it were subject, add to the num- 

 ber of its idle, thriftless, criminal and dangerous classes, and invite 

 disease, disorder and treasonable tumults. As, therefore, to amplify 

 the street arrangements or otherwise enlarge the public accommoda- 

 tions for trade or residence, would be to increase its attractions, the 

 true policy w r as generally assumed to be in the other direction. In 

 London, not only its own Corporation followed this policy, but Parlia- 

 ment and the Sovereign systematically did the same. 



Once, for instance, a proclamation w T as issued, to forbid under heavy 

 penalties -the erection of any houses, except such as should be suitable 

 for the residence of the gentry, within three miles of the town ; another 

 followed which interdicted householders from enlarging the accommo- 

 dations for strangers within the town; another enjoined all persons 

 who had houses in the country to quit the town within three weeks, 

 while constant efforts were made to ship off those who had none to 

 Ireland, Virginia, or Jamaica, 



In spite of all, new houses were built on the sides of the old country 

 roads, the suburban villages grew larger and larger till at length they 

 were all one town with London and the population became twice as 

 great and the commerce much more than twice as great as at the time 



