Economics -- Early works to 1800; Finance -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Economic conditions -- 18th century
1. Their Commission and charter should become void, and all their stock
forfeit, and the lands enclosed and unsold remain as a pledge, which
would be security sufficient.
2. The ten persons chosen out of every county should have power to
inspect and complain, and the Lord Chancellor, upon such complaint, to
make a survey, and to determine by a jury, in which case, on default,
they shall be obliged to proceed.
3. The lands settled on the bank shall be liable to be extended for the
uses mentioned, if the same at any time be not maintained in the
condition at first provided, and the bank to be amerced upon complaint of
the country.
These and other conditions, which on a legal settlement to be made by
wiser heads than mine might be thought on, I do believe would form a
constitution so firm, so fair, and so equally advantageous to the
country, to the poor, and to the public, as has not been put in practice
in these later ages of the world. To discourse of this a little in
general, and to instance in a place perhaps that has not its fellow in
the kingdom—the parish of Islington, in Middlesex. There lies through
this large parish the greatest road in England, and the most frequented,
especially by cattle for Smithfield market; this great road has so many
branches, and lies for so long a way through the parish, and withal has
the inconvenience of a clayey ground, and no gravel at hand, that,
modestly speaking, the parish is not able to keep it in repair; by which
means several cross-roads in the parish lie wholly unpassable, and carts
and horses (and men too) have been almost buried in holes and sloughs;
and the main road itself has for many years lain in a very ordinary
condition, which occasioned several motions in Parliament to raise a toll
at Highgate for the performance of what it was impossible the parish
should do, and yet was of so absolute necessity to be done. And is it
not very probable the parish of Islington would part with all the waste
land upon their roads, to be eased of the intolerable assessment for
repair of the highway, and answer the poor, who reap but a small benefit
from it, some other way? And yet I am free to affirm that for a grant of
waste and almost useless land, lying open to the highway (those lands to
be improved, as they might easily be), together with the eight years’
assessment to be provided in workmen, a noble, magnificent causeway might
be erected, with ditches on either side, deep enough to receive the
water, and drains sufficient to carry it off, which causeway should be
four feet high at least, and from thirty to forty feet broad, to reach
from London to Barnet, paved in the middle, to keep it coped, and so
supplied with gravel and other proper materials as should secure it from
decay with small repairing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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