There was not then the intercourse which now exists between the two classes. [The Londoner and the rustic Englishman.] Only very great men were in the habit of dividing the year between town and country. Few esquires came to the capital thrice in their lives. [And again], The chief cause which made the fusion of the different elements of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty found in passing from place to place. _Of all_ inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone excepted, _those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilization of our species. Every improvement_ of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the branches of the great human family. [Further on], It was by the highways that both travellers and goods generally passed from place to place; and those highways appear to have been far worse than might have been expected from the degree of wealth and civilization which the nation had even then attained. The degree of civilization attained was no doubt due to other things than the public roads. Sea transportation brought to England the products of the world. Coast transportation was well developed and river and canal transportation had well begun. Macaulay states that One chief cause of the badness of the roads seems to have been the defective state of the law. Every parish was bound to repair the highways which passed through it. The peasantry were forced to give their gratuitous labor six days in the year.... That a route connecting two great towns, which have a large and thriving trade with each other, should be maintained at the cost of the rural population scattered between them, is obviously unjust. This sounds like modern arguments against paving rural roads and charging the cost to the abutting property, and is evidently one good reason for state and national aid.