Incidentally, this fact may explain why country roads to-day, still following old tracks, often have so many twists and turns when, one might think, they could just as well have been made straight.
A writer in the "Westminster Review" for October, 1825, referring to the lack of finger-posts, says: "There is scarcely a parish in the country, and not one in the remoter parts, where a stranger can possibly find his way, for want of this obvious remedy. South Wales is an inextricable labyrinth; it is a chance if there is a finger-post in the whole principality. Cornwall and Devonshire are as bad. If by chance they are once erected they are never repaired or replaced. The justices know their own roads and care nothing for the traveller."
Cross = cross road.
Similar Committees were, also, appointed in 1819, 1820, and 1821. In the report it eventually issued, the Committee of 1811 said: "By the improvement of our roads, every branch of our agricultural, commercial and manufacturing industry would be materially benefitted. Every article brought to market would be diminished in price; the number of horses would be so much reduced, that by these and other retrenchments, the expense of five millions would be annually saved to the public."
It was shown in evidence before the Select Committee of 1819 that the "surveyors" in a certain district included a miller, an undertaker, a carpenter, a coal merchant, a publican, a baker, "an infirm old man," and "a bedridden old man who had not been out of his house for several months." Nineteen times out of twenty, it was declared, the appointment was "a perfect job."