A History of Inland Transport and Communication in England. Edwin A. Pratt
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, 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 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 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 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