OUR HIGHWAYS.

Ir was said of a certain county, by its historian Aubrey, that 'by reason of its clear ayre and clean wayes, it was full of many gentile habitations.' There can be no question that while there is no greater proof of a backward civilisation than an absence of good roads in a country, there are few more certain means of advancing its prosperity than by improving its internal communication. In England, as elsewhere, the Romans were our great masters in the art of roadmaking. A thousand years of disuse have not sufficed to obliterate. from the face of the country, traces of the long lines of roadway which connected their principal camps and stations with each other. Some of them still serve as the foundation of modern highways. But, for the most part being designed and executed for military purposes alone, they remain simply as monuments to attest the energy and the engineering skill of a race who were at one time the indisputable masters of what was then the civilised world. Our Saxon forefathers were far behind them in this respect. Despite the example which had been set them, their ideas of local self-government gravitated in a very different direction. The withdrawal of the controlling and originating central authority told in England, as it did elsewhere, against the continuance of the intercourse which had previously existed between localities distant from each other. Great as were the capacities for managing their own affairs, displayed by the various districts into which England became split up after the departure of the Romans, there is no blinking the fact that the roads, even in the more frequented parts of the country, became steadily worse. The old Roman streets' were no longer kept in repair, partly, no doubt, because the exigencies of trade refused to be warped into the lines of strategical convenience; but partly also, it must be admitted, because public opinion was by no means alive to the necessity of good roads at all. The commerce of the country, such as it was, was carried on mainly by means of packhorses. Chariots had ceased to be used for the purposes of war; such wains as there were, had their cumbrous fabric supported upon wheels hewn out of a solid block of wood, which creaked and groaned as they rumbled along over the hardest and most gravelly tracks which could be found for them. Wherever

firm soil was wanting, each waggoner picked out for himself a new line of country, warned against bogs and marshes by the apparent failures of those who had immediately preceded them. Where the land had begun to be enclosed, and the soil was tenacious, lanes' of enormous width were left to serve as the main arteries of traffic, each vehicle during winter carefully avoiding old tracks, as leading to certain breakdowns. The results of this primitive order of things may still be traced distinctly all over that large portion of the south of England which remains unenclosed, and even in those parts of the midland counties where the population has not increased rapidly, and traces are still left of the general configuration of the country. Macaulay has left us a striking description of the state of the sister country in this respect so late as the time of William the Third. We know how it fared with Scotland before the days of General Wade, so celebrated for his road-making exploits. Nor have we reason to believe that any real advance was made in road-making science in England itself, until the use of wheeled carriages became general, and the construction of something like sound ground upon which they could travel became in consequence a necessity.

As usual in England, relief when it did come was not initiated by the State, but was left to be accomplished by the efforts of private enterprise. The gradual sanction and formation of turnpike trusts commenced in the last century, and probably reached its highest point of efficiency just before the old mail-coach roads' of the United Kingdom were finally superseded by railways, and the magnificent teams' which traversed them by day and night had to give way to the untiring iron horse. Of course the natural consequence of the neglect of its duty by the central authority resulted in a want of system, and occasionally also in a want of engineering skill. Scotland and Ireland, which were both nearly a generation behind England in the matter of road making, eventually eclipsed her altogether. All their more important highways were constructed more or less under the supervision of a central authority, and at a time when engineering science was far more advanced both in the art of avoiding obstacles when they could be avoided, and of encountering them when they had to be faced. There grew up, too, a class of men of whom the late Lord George Cavendish and Mr. Battie Wrightson were perhaps the most familiar examples to those of the present generation, who devoted their attention in Parliament to the solution of the intricate questions to which these trusts incessantly gave rise, and to the reduction into something like order, of the chaos which had been gradually created by their number and importance to the public. In justice to those who managed them it must be said that, under their auspices, the main roads of the United Kingdom became models of construction, which, albeit they had been provided at the expense, and were managed under the superin

tendence, of private associations, the first Napoleon himself might well have envied. There were, of course, none of the difficulties to be overcome which had to be encountered by the enterprising road makers who, starting from the head of the Rhone valley at Brieg, never stopped until they had triumphantly carried the Simplon road to the very gates of Milano il Grande.' But even that noble roadway, which taxed heavily the resources of an empire, must have yielded the palm for smoothness of surface and durability of construction to the 'great north road,' the road from London to Holyhead, over the Menai Bridge, or that from London to Exeter, of half a century back.

It was not until the turnpike trusts were gradually beginning to expire by effluxion of time, that the real battle of the highways, which has been so hotly contested, and which is, indeed, still going on, began in earnest. By this time the old main arteries of traffic had ceased to be of their ancient importance, the railways having entirely supplanted them. The traffic over them was becoming year by year less self-supporting, and would, indeed, have altogether failed to maintain the toll gates had not these been vexatiously posted at every entrance to every market town. A class of roads, too, had gradually acquired importance which had previously been insignificant byways; we refer to those which connected towns or villages with the neighbouring railway stations, situated as they almost invariably are at some distance from the old channels of communication. For one vehicle which travelled over the latter, twenty rattled backwards and forwards often several times a day, from warehouses, from docks, or from hotels, over the road which led to the station. A change of front became imperative in the face of circumstances which had entirely altered. Not only was it necessary to discover some fresh agency, through the medium of which roads should be kept in order at all, but an entirely new classification of them, adapted to the new order of things, was also requisite. A third element of difficulty was introduced into the question, by the fact that the public loudly demanded good roads in localities where they had hitherto been contented to put up with indifferent, or even with bad ones. There are plenty of districts in which, within the memory of middle-aged men, there was hardly a metalled road off the turnpikes, where such a state of things would now be regarded as intolerable. The idea, too, of fording a brook, even if its ordinary depth is only a few inches, would be scouted as a relic of primitive barbarism, and the Queen's highway' must not only rest upon a sound basis of metal, but the smallest stream which it crosses must also be adequately bridged. The questions thus arose, who was to find the money for all this? under whose management were the roads which had been completed to be placed? who was to have the responsibility of making new ones as they were required, and of deciding under which cate

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gories, present and future, highways should be classed as regarded their character, their importance, and the cost of their maintenance? The experiment of trusting a subject so important for the public at large to the efforts of private enterprise or to the exertions of parochial authorities had not proved, as we have already pointed out, entirely successful. The time had come for a new departure, and the question was, upon what guiding lines and principles should that departure be taken. Hitherto the turnpike roads' had been substantially under the control of bodies constituted under, and deriving their powers from, various Acts of Parliament. Local roads had in like manner been superintended by the vestries acting through their way-wardens, as the parish officers elected annually to fill the office were appropriately designated. As so often happens in this country, this system, however logically unsound, had in practice not worked badly. The toll gates, vexatious and unpopular as they were, had the merit of at least exacting the highest toll from those who used the road most. Cases of individual hardship no doubt there were, and must, we fear, continue to be under any arrangement; but there is no gainsaying the fact that, so far as our main roads were concerned, those who took most out of them contributed most to their maintenance, while the state of their subsidiary feeders was left to the discretion of those who best knew their requirements and suffered most by the neglect of them. Substantial justice, therefore, was done to the taxpayer, although occasionally, through the ignorance or obstinacy of its officials, one parish lagged behind its neighbours in the matter of what were popularly known as the parish roads.

It is now about twenty years ago that public attention was called, by the gradual expiration of the Turnpike Trust Acts, to the question of their renewal. Sir George Grey was then at the Home Office, with the late Mr. George Clive as his under secretary. Strong opinions were expressed on all sides, by those best acquainted with the subject, that the time had come for a change, and these opinions appear to have been endorsed by those whose official duty it was to take cognisance of them. The first step was taken in the year 1862, by the permissive formation of highway districts to supersede, under certain specified conditions, the action of the lapsed turnpike trusts. This was followed two years later by a still more important measure. The whole question was transferred from the superintendence of the Home Office to that of the House of Commons, and from this period accordingly may be said to date the commencement of our present highway system. Reforms of any kind are, in England, always of slow growth. But considering the obvious inconvenience which attends a double management of the roads in the same district, the statement will probably create surprise, that out of the 15,000 parishes into which England is divided, 5,000 only, or about onethird of its total area, are even now included within the limits of

highway districts. For several years after the change of 1864 matters were kept quiet by the stop-gap expedient of passing an annual Turnpike Trusts Continuance Act, the object of which was to clothe with a temporary vitality trusts which would have otherwise come to an end, but which there were still special reasons for keeping alive. It was not until 1870 that the complaints which were made by those parishes upon whom the expense of the disturnpiked roads had been thrown, rendered another step in advance essential. The formation of highway districts had been encouraged. The Committee of the House of Commons acted upon the principle of disturnpiking roads wherever it was practicable, but by this time seventeen or eighteen hundred miles of road had been subjected to the process, and the cost began to grow serious to those immediately affected by it. The committee felt that they had gone somewhat too far, and professed that they should never have done so, had they not anticipated action on the part of the Government to supply a remedy for such a state of things. A clause was inserted in the annual Bill of that year, throwing the cost of maintenance of a disturnpiked road, not upon the parish through which it passed, but upon the highway district, if there was one in existence. One object of the provision was probably to exert a gentle pressure in favour of the formation of highway districts. Another, as we have already observed, was to remedy an injustice which might have been avoided by the exercise of a little more care and foresight. Unfortunately, the lack of highway districts, to which we have alluded, rendered the cure very partial. Strong representations were again made by the committee, in the years 1874 and 1875, of the complaints which arose from parishes not included in highway districts, and led to the introduction in the latter year of Mr. Sclater Booth's County Boards Bill, which never passed into law. This measure proceeded very much upon the lines of the Bill of 1870, and proposed to charge half the expense of the highways upon a rate to be levied by a county board partly representative and partly nominated. The Bill was drafted in accordance with principles which had already been worked out successfully in South Wales, and is important inasmuch as the Highways Act of 1878, though differing in minor matters, was identical with it in its main provisions. These may be divided into three classes: 1. The classification of roads under two distinct heads, the cost of the main roads being partly spread over the whole country. 2. The formation of highway districts and the regulation of their boundaries, so as to make them coincide with other areas for local government purposes. 3. That wherever highway districts were formed, district and not parochial rating should be the rule. In other words, the arrangements of the future were to be, as far as possible, symmetrical. The main difference between the Bill proposed in 1875 and that which passed into law in 1878 was that the former contem