Economics -- Early works to 1800; Finance -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Economic conditions -- 18th century
This commission shall give power to the said fifteen to press waggons,
carts, and horses, oxen and men, and detain them to work a certain
limited time, and within certain limited space of miles from their own
dwellings, and at a certain rate of payment. No men, horses, or carts to
be pressed against their consent during the times of hay-time or harvest,
or upon market-days, if the person aggrieved will make affidavit he is
obliged to be with his horses or carts at the said markets.
It is well known to all who have any knowledge of the condition the
highways in England now lie in that in most places there is a convenient
distance land left open for travelling, either for driving of cattle, or
marching of troops of horse, with perhaps as few lanes or defiles as in
any countries. The cross-roads, which are generally narrow, are yet
broad enough in most places for two carriages to pass; but, on the other
hand, we have on most of the highroads a great deal, if waste land thrown
in (as it were, for an overplus to the highway), which, though it be used
of course by cattle and travellers on occasion, is indeed no benefit at
all either to the traveller as a road or to the poor as a common, or to
the lord of the manor as a waste; upon it grows neither timber nor grass,
in any quantity answerable to the land, but, though to no purpose, is
trodden down, poached, and overrun by drifts of cattle in the winter, or
spoiled with the dust in the summer. And this I have observed in many
parts of England to be as good land as any of the neighbouring
enclosures, as capable of improvement, and to as good purpose.
These lands only being enclosed and manured, leaving the roads to
dimensions without measure sufficient, are the fund upon which I build
the prodigious stock of money that must do this work. These lands (which
I shall afterwards make an essay to value), being enclosed, will be
either saleable to raise money, or fit to exchange with those gentlemen
who must part with some land where the ways are narrow, always reserving
a quantity of these lands to be let out to tenants, the rent to be paid
into the public stock or bank of the undertakers, and to be reserved for
keeping the ways in the same repair, and the said bank to forfeit the
lands if they are not so maintained.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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