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:--