The roads constructed by Metcalf and others had the effect of greatly improving the communications of Yorkshire and Lancashire, and opening up those counties to the trade then flowing into them from all directions. But the administration of the highways and turnpikes being entirely local, their good or bad management depending upon the public spirit and enterprise of the gentlemen of the locality, it frequently happened that while the roads of one county were exceedingly good, those of the adjoining county were altogether execrable.
Even in the immediate vicinity of the metropolis the Surrey roads remained comparatively unimproved. Those through the interior of Kent were wretched. When Mr. Rennie, the engineer, was engaged in surveying the Weald with a view to the cutting of a canal through it in 1802, he found the country almost destitute of practicable roads, though so near to the metropolis on the one hand and to the sea-coast on the other. The interior of the county was then comparatively untraversed, except by bands of smugglers, who kept the inhabitants in a state of constant terror. In an agricultural report on the county of Northampton as late as the year 1813, it was stated that the only way of getting along some of the main lines of road in rainy weather, was by swimming!
In the neighbourhood of the city of Lincoln the communications were little better, and there still stands upon what is called Lincoln Heath—though a heath no longer—a curious memorial of the past in the shape of Dunstan Pillar, a column seventy feet high, erected about the middle of last century in the midst of the then dreary, barren waste, for the purpose of serving as a mark to wayfarers by day and a beacon to them by night.*[2]
[Image] Land Lighthouse on Lincoln Heath.
At that time the Heath was not only uncultivated, but it was also unprovided with a road across it. When the late Lady Robert Manners visited Lincoln from her residence at Bloxholm, she was accustomed to send forward a groom to examine some track, that on his return he might be able to report one that was practicable. Travellers frequently lost themselves upon this heath. Thus a family, returning from a ball at Lincoln, strayed from the track twice in one night, and they were obliged to remain there until morning. All this is now changed, and Lincoln Heath has become covered with excellent roads and thriving farmsteads. "This Dunstan Pillar," says Mr. Pusey, in his review of the agriculture of Lincolnshire, in 1843, "lighted up no longer time ago for so singular a purpose, did appear to me a striking witness of the spirit of industry which, in our own days, has reared the thriving homesteads around it, and spread a mantle of teeming vegetation to its very base. And it was certainly surprising to discover at once the finest farming I had ever seen and the only land lighthouse ever raised.*[3] Now that the pillar has ceased to cheer the wayfarer, it may serve as a beacon to encourage other landowners in converting their dreary moors into similar scenes of thriving industry."*[4] When the improvement of the high roads of the country fairly set in, the progress made was very rapid. This was greatly stimulated by the important inventions of tools, machines, and engines, made towards the close of last century, the products of which—more especially of the steam-engine and spinning-machine—so largely increased the wealth of the nation. Manufactures, commerce, and shipping, made unprecedented strides; life became more active; persons and commodities circulated more rapidly; every improvement in the internal communications being followed by an increase of ease, rapidity, and economy in locomotion. Turnpike and post roads were speedily extended all over the country, and even the rugged mountain districts of North Wales and the Scotch Highlands became as accessible as any English county. The riding postman was superseded by the smartly appointed mail-coach, performing its journeys with remarkable regularity at the average speed of ten miles an hour. Slow stagecoaches gave place to fast ones, splendidly horsed and "tooled," until travelling by road in England was pronounced almost perfect.
But all this was not enough. The roads and canals, numerous and perfect though they might be, were found altogether inadequate to the accommodation of the traffic of the country, which had increased, at a constantly accelerating ratio, with the increased application of steam power to the purposes of productive industry. At length steam itself was applied to remedy the inconveniences which it had caused; the locomotive engine was invented, and travelling by railway became generally adopted. The effect of these several improvements in the means of locomotion, has been to greatly increase the public activity, and to promote the general comfort and well-being. They have tended to bring the country and the town much closer together; and, by annihilating distance as measured by time, to make the whole kingdom as one great city. What the personal blessings of improved communication have been, no one has described so well as the witty and sensible Sydney Smith:—
"It is of some importance," he wrote, "at what period a man is born. A young man alive at this period hardly knows to what improvement of human life he has been introduced; and I would bring before his notice the changes which have taken place in England since I began to breathe the breath of life, a period amounting to over eighty years. Gas was unknown; I groped about the streets of London in the all but utter darkness of a twinkling oil lamp, under the protection of watchmen in their grand climacteric, and exposed to every species of degradation and insult. I have been nine hours in sailing from Dover to Calais, before the invention of steam. It took me nine hours to go from Taunton to Bath, before the invention of railroads; and I now go in six hours from Taunton to London! In going from Taunton to Bath, I suffered between l0,000 and 12,000 severe contusions, before stone-breaking Macadam was born…. As the basket of stage-coaches in which luggage was then carried had no springs, your clothes were rubbed all to pieces; and, even in the best society, one-third of the gentlemen at least were always drunk….. I paid 15L. in a single year for repairs of carriage-springs on the pavement of London; and I now glide without noise or fracture on wooden pavement. I can walk, by the assistance of the police, from one end of London to the other without molestation; or, if tired, get into a cheap and active cab, instead of those cottages on wheels which the hackney coaches were at the beginning of my life….. Whatever miseries I suffered, there was no post to whisk my complaints for a single penny to the remotest comer of the empire; and yet, in spite of all these privations, I lived on quietly, and am now ashamed that I was not more discontented, and utterly surprised that all these changes and inventions did not occur two centuries ago.
With the history of these great improvements is also mixed up the story of human labour and genius, and of the patience and perseverance displayed in carrying them out. Probably one of the best illustrations of character in connection with the development of the inventions of the last century, is to be found in the life of Thomas Telford, the greatest and most scientific road-maker of his day, to which we proceed to direct the attention of the reader.
Footnotes for Chapter VI.
*[1] 'Observations on Blindness and on the Employment of the other Senses to supply the Loss of Sight.' By Mr. Bew.—'Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester,' vol.i., pp. 172-174. Paper read 17th April, 1782.