In Devonshire the Rev. James Brome, who published in 1726 a narrative of "Three Years Travels in England, Scotland, and Wales," found the farmers carrying their corn on horseback, the roads being too narrow to allow of the use of waggons.
Altogether the need for improved facilities for inland communication in the interests alike of travellers and of traders was great beyond all question, and there was unlimited scope for the operation of such improvement as was represented by the turnpike system, now coming into vogue.
It was, however, not so much the general needs of the country as the rebellion in Scotland in 1745, accompanied by such disasters for the Royalist troops as their defeat at Preston Pans, which had led the Government to pay special attention to the subject of road-making and road-improvement. Between 1726 and 1737 General Wade, employing in summer about 500 soldiers on the work, had constructed in Scotland itself some 250 miles of what were, in point of fact, military roads, being designed as a means of reducing disorder in that country. The communications between Scotland and England still remained, however, very defective, and, though English cavalry and artillery had gone forward bravely enough when the rebellion broke out, they found roads that, apart altogether from any question of fighting on them, were not fit for them even to move upon; so that while the troops from the south were hampered and delayed by the narrow tracks, the ruts and the bogs which impeded their advance, the enemy, more at home in these conditions, had all the advantage.
No sooner, therefore, had the rebellion been overcome than the Government, recognising that, even if turnpikes were set up along the roads on the border between Scotland and England, the tolls likely to be raised there would be wholly inadequate for the purpose, themselves took in hand the work of road construction and improvement; and this action gave impetus to a movement for improving roads in England and Wales generally.
Down to this time the turnpike system had undergone very little development. For a quarter of a century after it had been applied, by the Act of 1663, to the Great North Road, no Turnpike Acts at all were sought. A few were then obtained, but until the middle of the eighteenth century, at least, even if not still later, travellers from Edinburgh to London met with no turnpikes until they came within about 110 miles of their destination. Newcastle and Carlisle were still connected by a bridle path only, while a writer in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for November, 1752, in alluding to the journey from London to Falmouth, says that "after the first 47 miles from London you never set eyes on a turnpike for 220 miles."
The policy adopted by the Government so far stimulated the action of private enterprise that between 1760 and 1774 no fewer than 453 Turnpike Acts were passed for the making and repairing of roads, and many more were to follow.
CHAPTER X
THE TURNPIKE SYSTEM
The fundamental principle of the turnpike system was that of transferring the cost of repairing main roads from the parish to the users.
The mediæval practice, under which the roads were maintained by religious houses, private benevolence and individual landowners, had, of course, still left the common law obligation that each and every parish should keep in repair the roads within its own particular limits, the Act of Philip and Mary, with its imposition of statute duty, being, in effect, only a means for the regulation and carrying out of such requirement. The parishioners were even indictable if they failed to keep the roads in repair.