A History of Inland Transport and Communication in England. Edwin A. Pratt
dry when the "metal," or covering of broken stone, was laid in position. Keeping the water out of the road by this means, he would prevent the road itself from being broken up by the action of frost, and he would have a more elastic surface than if there were a solid stone foundation under the metal. The thickness of his consolidated cover of broken stones would, he further argued, be immaterial to its weight-carrying capacity.
In 1816 McAdam became surveyor of roads in the Bristol district, and the object lessons in road-mending which he provided there were so convincing that his system began to be generally approved in 1818. In 1827 he was appointed Surveyor-General of Roads, and in the same year he issued a ninth edition of his "Remarks on the Present System of Road-Making."
In this publication he states, among other things, that very considerable sums were being raised annually in the kingdom, principally from tolls, on account of turnpike roads, and these funds were expended, nominally under the protection of Commissioners, but practically under the surveyors. Every Session there were numerous applications to Parliament by turnpike trusts for powers to increase their tolls in order to pay off their debts and to keep the roads in repair. In the Session of 1815 there were 34 such petitions; in 1816 there were 32, and "all passed as a matter of course." The condition of the turnpike roads was, nevertheless, most defective, and that of the parish roads was "more deplorable than that of the turnpike roads." Legislative enactments for the maintenance and repair of the parish roads were so inadequate that these roads "might be considered as being placed almost out of the protection of the law." In the result "The defective state of the roads, independent of the unnecessary expense, is oppressive on agriculture, commerce and manufactures by the increase of the price of transport, by waste of the labour of cattle, and wear of carriages, as well as by causing much delay of time."
As for Scotland, he declared that "The roads in Scotland are worse than those in England, although materials are more abundant, of better quality, and labour at least as cheap, and the toll duties are nearly double; this is because road-making, that is the surface, is even worse understood in Scotland than in England." He mentions that the Postmaster-General had been obliged to give up the mail-coach from Glasgow to Ayr on account partly of the bad roads and partly of the expense, there being ten turnpike gates in 34 miles of road.
The roads were, in fact, McAdam continued, "universally in want of repair." Ample funds were already provided; but the surveyors employed by the turnpike trusts were "mostly persons ignorant of the nature of the duties they are called on to discharge,"[17] and the money brought in by a continual and apparently unlimited increase of the tolls was "misapplied in almost every part of the Kingdom." In some new roads made in Scotland the thickness of the materials used exceeded three feet;[18] but, said McAdam, "the road is as open as a sieve to receive water"; and what this meant he was able to show by pointing to the results of weather conditions on bad roads in the month of January, 1820. A severe frost was succeeded by a sudden thaw, accompanied by the melting of much snow, and the roads of the kingdom broke up in an alarming manner, causing great loss, much delay of the mails, and endless inconvenience. The cause of the trouble was explained by McAdam thus:—
"Previous to the severe frost the roads were filled with water which had penetrated through the ill-prepared and unskilfully-laid material; this caused immediate expansion of the whole mass during the frost, and, upon a sudden thaw, the roads became quite loose, and the wheels of the carriages penetrated to the original soil, which was also saturated with water, from the open state of the road. By this means many roads became altogether impassable."
On the 1000 miles of road to which his own system had been applied there had, he further said, been no breaking up at all by reason of frost.
The figure here given suggests the extensive adoption of McAdam's system which was then proceeding. It was not only that old roads were being repaired according to his plan, but there was much construction of "macadamised" roads, the deficiencies of the existing roads having discouraged and checked the provision of new ones. Between 1818 and 1829, as told by Porter, in his "Progress of the Nation," the length of turnpike roads in England and Wales was increased by more than 1000 miles. In proportion, also, as the turnpike roads increased alike in number and in quality, through the wider adoption of McAdam's system, there was a corresponding impetus given to coaching in respect both to number of vehicles and to increase of speed, leading up to those "palmy days" of coaching which were only to close with the spread of the railway.
It is true that McAdam's plans were not adhered to exactly as he first laid them down. Greater experience led later authorities to attach more importance to a foundation than McAdam had been disposed to do; though they did not necessarily have foundations laid by hand, after the manner of Telford's buried pavements. Later, the introduction, also, of the steam-roller was to revolutionise the art of making macadamised roads.
Nor can it be disputed that McAdam and Telford had both, to a certain extent, been anticipated. In an article on roads published in the "Quarterly Review," in 1820, the observation is made in respect to them that "Many of the practices of each of these gentlemen had been previously adopted in a variety of instances; but it required zeal and perseverance like theirs to recommend the entire system to the attention of the public."
Other persons might have recommended the use of broken stones, and these are said to have been already employed in Switzerland before McAdam came on the scene; but it was his lucid explanation of the scientific bearing of angular as opposed to round stones; his untiring zeal in travelling thousands of miles over English and Scottish roads in order to see and study everything for himself; and his advocacy of scientific road-making with such indefatigable energy, though to his own impoverishment (until Parliament voted him recompense), that led to the conspicuous and world-wide success his system eventually attained.
Writing in 1826, "Nimrod" said: "Roads may be called the veins and arteries of a country, through which channels every improvement circulates. I really consider Mr. McAdam as being, next to Dr. Jenner, the greatest contributor to the welfare of mankind that this country has ever produced."
This may seem, to-day, to be exaggerated praise; but if the reader looks at the matter from the point of view from which "Nimrod" himself must have regarded it, and tries to realise how greatly the deplorable state of the roads—before McAdam began to repair them—was hampering social life, travel, trade, commerce and national industries, he will probably conclude that such praise, at such a period, and in such circumstances, was far from being undeserved.
The turnpike system lasted well into the railway period, and the story of its gradual decline and the causes that led thereto has still to be told. Before, however, dealing further with these aspects of the general question I propose to revert to the subject of rivers and river navigation; to show, next, how canals and canal transport were developed; and then to give an account of the rise of that railway system which was so materially to affect alike rivers, canals and turnpike roads as well.
CHAPTER XIII
RIVERS AND RIVER TRANSPORT
In the earliest days of our history, and for many generations later, navigable rivers exercised a most important, if not a paramount, influence on the settlement of tribes, the location of towns, the development of trade and the social life of the people. They were natural highways, open to all who possessed the means of using them, at a time when men had otherwise still to make roads for themselves; and in a land covered to so great an extent with forest and fen such natural highways were of exceptional value. They offered a ready means of reaching points in the interior of the country which would otherwise have been more or less inaccessible. They allowed of the transport, in craft however primitive, of commodities too heavy or too bulky for conveyance by packhorse along the narrow paths trodden out on the hill-sides, winding through woods, or picked out across bog, plain, or morass.
Rivers further helped to develop that civilisation which is directly encouraged by facility of communication between groups of people who would otherwise assuredly remain backward in social progress. It will even be found that down to the turnpike, if not, indeed, to the railway, era