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.
But in proportion as trade and travel increased, the greater became alike
the need for good roads and, also, the apparent injustice of requiring the
residents in a particular parish to do statute labour on roads, or to pay
for labour thereon, less in the interest of themselves and their neighbours
than in that of strangers, or traffic, passing through on the main road
from one town to another. In effect, also, whether such requirement were
reasonable or not, the work itself was either not done at all or was done
in a way that still left the roads in a condition commonly described as
"execrable."
The principle that the users should pay for the main roads by means of
tolls was thus definitely adopted; but the obligation in regard to other
than main roads still rested in full with the parish. It was not, however,
until the passing of 24 Geo. II., c. 43, that turnpike roads were mentioned
as distinct from "highways," this being the accepted designation for roads
for which the parish was responsible. When the adoption of the turnpike
system became more general, that is to say, about the year 1767, the
turnpike roads were maintained--or were supposed to be maintained--by
tolls, and the {78}statute labour and contributions in lieu thereof were
mainly appropriated to the cross roads constituting the parish highways, on
which no turnpikes were placed; though certain proportions of the statute
labour or statute labour contributions also became available for turnpike
roads which could not otherwise be properly maintained.
At first there was a pronounced disinclination on the part of the public in
various parts of the country to tolerate toll-bars. It might be supposed
that, the state of the roads having generally been so deplorable, everyone
would have welcomed their amendment under almost any possible conditions.
Defoe, at least, was enthusiastic over the prospect of better roads that
turnpikes foreshadowed. Alluding to them in his "Tour," he says: "And 'tis
well worth recording, for the Honour of the present Age, that this Work has
been begun, and is in an extraordinary Manner carry'd on, and perhaps may,
in a great Measure be compleat within our Memory, as to the worst and most
dangerous Roads in the Kingdom. And this is a Work of so much general Good
that certainly no publick Edifice, Alms-house, Hospital or Nobleman's
Palace, can be of equal Value to the Country with this, nor at the same
time more an Honour and Ornament to it."
But there was another point of view which is thus expressed by Whitaker in
"Loidis and Elmete": "To intercept an ancient highway, to distrain upon a
man for the purchase of a convenience which he does not desire, and to
debar him from the use of his ancient accommodation, bad as it was, because
he will not pay for a better, has certainly an arbitrary aspect, at which
the rude and undisciplined rabble of the north would naturally revolt."
Objections to turnpikes had been further fomented by demagogues who went
about the country proclaiming that the gates which were being put up were
part of a design planned by the Government to enslave the people and
deprive them of their liberty.
Not only did many individuals in various parts of the country refuse to use
the turnpike roads, or to pay toll if they did use them, but in some
instances the gates were destroyed, by way of making the protests more
emphatic. In 1728 it was thought necessary to pass a general Act against
"ill-designing and disorderly persons" who had "in various parts of this
{79}Kingdom associated themselves together, both by day and by night, and
cut down, pulled down, burnt and otherwise destroyed several turnpike gates
and houses which have been erected by authority of Parliament for repairing
divers roads by tolls, thereby preventing such tolls from being taken, and
lessening the security of divers of her Majesty's good subjects for
considerable sums of money which they have advanced upon credit of the said
Acts, and deterring others from making like advances." Persons convicted of
such offences were--without any discretion being given to the justices--to
be committed for three months' imprisonment, and were, also, to be whipped
at the market cross. These penalties appear to have been unavailing, since
we find that four years later the punishment, even for a first offence, was
increased to seven years' transportation.
But the hostility increased rather than diminished. In the "Gentleman's
Magazine" for 1749 there is an account of some turnpike riots in Somerset
and Gloucestershire which began on the night of the 24th of July and were
not suppressed until the 5th of the following month. A start was made with
the destruction of the gates near Bedminster by "great numbers of people."
On the following night a crowd bored holes in the gates at Don John's
Cross, a mile from Bristol, blew up the gates with gunpowder, and destroyed
the toll-house. Cross-bars and posts were erected next day, in place of the
gates, and the turnpike commissioners took it in turns to enforce payment
of the tolls. At night "a prodigious body of Somersetshire people," armed
with various instruments of destruction, and some of them disguised in
women's clothes, went along the roads to an accompaniment of drum-beating
and much shouting, demolished the turnpikes, and pulled down the
toll-houses. Re-erected, the gates were guarded by a "body of seamen, well
armed with musquets, pistols and cutlasses"; but two nights afterwards the
rioters were out again, this time with rusty swords, pitch-forks, axes,
guns, pistols and clubs. They demolished and burned some turnpikes which
had been put up a third time, and destroyed others besides. By August 3
"almost all the turnpikes and turnpike-houses" in the neighbourhood of
Bristol had been demolished; but a report dated Bristol, August 12, says:
"By the arrival of six troops of dragoon guards on the 5th, {80}we are
secured from all insults of the country people who immediately dispersed
and posts and chains are again erected, and the tolls levied, but the
turnpikes are fixed nearer the city."
The revolt in Yorkshire referred to by Whitaker occurred in 1753, four
years later than the disturbances in the west. At Selby the inhabitants
were summoned by the bellman to assemble at midnight, with hatchets and
axes, and destroy the turnpikes. They obeyed the summons, and any gate left
unprotected was soon level with the ground. In the neighbourhood of Leeds
the rioting was especially serious. Whitaker says concerning it:--
"The public roads about Leeds were at that time narrow, generally
consisting of a hollow way that only allowed a passage for carriages drawn
by a horse in a single row, and an elevated causeway covered with flags or
boulder stones.
"The attempt to improve this state of the public roads excited great
discontent among the lower classes of the people, who formed the design of
pulling down all the turnpike bars in the neighbourhood."
They pulled down, or burned down, as many as a dozen in one week; and when
some of the rioters had been arrested, and were on their way to York
Castle, their friends attempted a rescue, following this up by assaulting
the magistrates and breaking some windows. Troops were called out, and,
warnings and the firing of blank cartridge being of no avail, ball
cartridges were used, with the result that two or three persons were shot
dead, and twenty-two were wounded, some fatally.
Whatever the justification for the turnpikes that gave rise to this popular
discontent, the way in which the system itself was developed was certainly
open to criticism.
The precedent set by the Act of Charles II. in the grouping together of
several counties, and in conferring on the justices the powers of chief
control, was wholly disregarded. Instead of even an improvement on this
procedure being effected by the creation of a national system of turnpike
roads, directed by some central authority, and responding in regard to
internal communication to the wants of the country as a whole, there was
called into being an almost endless number of purely local trusts, each
taking charge of, as a rule, from ten to {81}twenty miles of road, each
concerned only in its own local, or even its own personal, interests, and
each operating under conditions that involved an excessive expenditure
with, too often, the most unsatisfactory of results for the general public.
The defects of the system thus brought about were well recognised by
various authorities at a time when they were still being experienced to the
full.
The Select Committee appointed by the House of Commons in 1819 to consider
the subject of public highways said in the course of their report:--
"The importance of land-carriage to the prosperity of a country need not be
dwelt upon. Next to the general influence of the seasons ... there is,
perhaps, no circumstance more interesting to men in a civilised state than
the perfection of the means of interior communication. It is a matter,
therefore, to be wondered at, that so great a source of national
improvement has hitherto been so much neglected. Instead of the roads of
the Kingdom being made a great national concern, a number of local trusts
are created, under the authority of which large sums of money are collected
from the public, and expended without adequate responsibility or control.
Hence arises a number of abuses, for which no remedy is provided, and the
resources of the country, instead of being devoted to useful purposes, are
too often improvidently wasted."
Writing in 1823, Dehany said in reference to the Act of 1663, "It is to be
regretted that this plan of passing one Act applicable to a considerable
district, and carrying it into execution under the superintendence of the
magistracy, was not pursued, instead of parcelling out the roads into
smaller divisions, with independent bodies of trustees"; while the
"Westminster Review," in its issue for October, 1825, argued that the whole
system of roads should be one, and continued:--
"Such a work might have been thought the duty of the Government most
interested in it; but that Government seems generally to be otherwise
occupied. Leaving all to individual exertion, it perhaps often leaves too
much; since there are matters in which individual exertion has an
insufficient interest, while there are others which it is unable to
accomplish without unjustifiable sacrifices. We do not desire the
perpetual, nor even the frequent interference of Government, that is most
{82}certain; but there is an useful medium between the intermeddling of
some of the continental states and that neglect, or, rather,
discountenance, which our own throws on numerous matters where its aid
would be of use, and which, without that aid, cannot be accomplished....
The freedom of universal communication is the object, and it is to little
purpose that one portion of a road be good if the other is impassable. It
is a national and not a private concern."
Under the conditions actually brought about it was left for any group of
landowners and others in any particular district where better roads were
needed to apply to Parliament for an Act authorising them to raise a loan
in order to meet the initial cost of making or repairing a road, and to set
up gates or bars where they could enforce payment of tolls out of which to
recoup themselves for their expenditure and meet the costs of maintenance.
Theoretically, these were simply temporary expedients, and the turnpike
trustees, having once provided a good road, and got their money back, would
take down the toll-gates again, and leave the road for the free use of the
public. Hence every Turnpike Act was granted only for a limited period,
generally about twenty years, and had to be renewed at the end of that term
if, as invariably happened, the debt on the road had not been cleared off,
and the need for toll-collection still remained. The cost of procuring the
periodical continuance of all these Acts was, in itself, a not
inconsiderable burden on the finances of the trusts. In, for example, the
twenty-four years from 1785 to 1809, the number of Turnpike Acts, whether
new Acts or renewals of old ones, passed by the Legislature was no fewer
than 1062.
One result of the excessive localisation of the turnpike system was that
trusts of absurdly large proportions were created to look after absurdly
small stretches of road. "The fundamental principle," says a writer in the
"Edinburgh Review" for October, 1819, "is always to vest the whole
management in the hands of the country gentlemen; and, as they act
gratuitously, it has been the policy of the law to appoint in each act a
prodigious number of commissioners--frequently from one hundred to two
hundred, for the care of ten or fifteen miles of road; and thus a business
of art and science is committed to a promiscuous mob of peers, squires,
farmers and shopkeepers, who are chosen, not for their {83}fitness to
discharge the duties of commissioners, but from the sole qualification of
residence within a short distance from the road to be made or repaired."
That the best interests of the community could be served under these
conditions was an impossibility. The "Edinburgh Review" declares, in fact,
that the whole time of the meetings of turnpike trusts was "occupied in
tumultuous and unprofitable discussions, and in resolving on things at one
meeting which run a good chance of being reversed at the next; that the
well informed and civilized commissioners become very soon disgusted with
the disorderly uproar, or the want of sense, temper or honesty of some of
their companions; and that the management finally falls into the hands of a
few busy, bustling, interested persons of low condition, who attend the
meetings with no idea of performing a public duty, but for the purpose of
turning their powers, by some device or other, to the profit of themselves
or of their friends or relations."
The writer of the article on "Roads" in "Rees' Cyclopædia" is no less
condemnatory of the whole system, speaking of the "violent disputations and
bickerings" at the meetings of the trustees, where, he says, "a proposed
new line of road or, perhaps, the repair of an old one, will sometimes be
contested with as great keenness and vehemence as if the parties were
contending whether Great Britain shall be a monarchy or a republic."
Each trust, again, had its own organisation, with attorney, treasurer,
clerk and surveyor; and one may assume that each of these individuals, in
turn, was inspired by no greater sense of public duty than were many of the
trustees themselves, and was much more concerned in what he could make out
of the business for himself than in helping to provide through routes of
communication in the interests of the community. The surveyors were,
generally speaking, hopelessly incompetent. The short length of road in
charge of a trust and the consequent limitation of the amount received for
tolls did not, as a rule, warrant the payment of an adequate salary to a
really qualified man, and the individual upon whom the courtesy title of
"surveyor" was conferred was often either the pensioned servant of a local
landowner or some other person equally unfit to be entrusted with those
functions of {84}road-management which the trustees, whether as the result
of their mutual differences or otherwise, generally left in his hands. The
"Edinburgh Review," in the article already quoted, declares that "the state
of the roads displays no symptoms of well qualified commissioners. They
leave the art and science of the business to their surveyor--who is
commonly just as much in the clouds as themselves as to his own proper
calling. With a laudable veneration for his forefathers, he proceeds
according to the antient system of things, without plan or method; and
fearing no rivalry, and subject to no intelligent control, he proceeds,
like his predecessors, to waste the road money on team work and paupers,
and leave nothing for the public like a road but the name and cost of it."
Nevertheless, the turnpike system, defective in itself, badly administered,
and burdensome to the toll-payers, did bring about an improvement in roads
which previously had too often received little or no attention; and this
improvement, as will be shown in the chapter that follows, had a material
influence on trade, travel and social conditions; though it was not to
attain its maximum results until the turnpike roads had been supplemented
by a further system of scientific road-making and road-repairing.
{85}CHAPTER XI