Road-making was formerly intrusted to the parochial authorities, and there was no supervision. It was carried out in slovenly and always in an unsystematic manner. In adopting a direct or circuitous line of way, innumerable predilections interfered, and parishes not infrequently quarrelled about the roads. The dispute between broad and narrow gauges raged long before railway lines were laid. A market town and a seaport would naturally desire to have ample verge and room enough on their highways for the transport of grain and other commodities from the interior, and for carriage of manufactured goods, or importations to the interior. On the other hand, isolated parishes would contend that driftways sufficed for their demands, and that they could house their crops, or bring their flour from the mill through the same ruts which had served their forefathers. After the Civil Wars an impetus was given to road-making; an Act was passed authorizing a small toll to pay for the maintenance of the highways. The turnpike gate was originally a bar supported on two posts on the opposite sides of the road, and the collector sat in the open air at his seat of custom. I remember fifty years ago travelling in Germany, where at the toll-gate was a little house; one end of the bar was heavily weighted, the other fastened by a chain that led into the turnpike man's room. The toll-man thrust forth a pole with a bag at the end, into which the coin was put, he drew in the bag at his window, unhooked the chain, and the weight sent the bar flying up, the carriage passed under, and then the bar was pulled down again. The people did not see the advantage of the toll-bar when first introduced, and riots broke out. The road surveyor was mobbed and beaten, the toll-bar was torn away and burnt. Even with systematic mending, the old roads were bad, for the true principle on which roads should be made was not known. John Loudon MacAdam, born 1756, died 1836, was the first to draw attention to the proper mode of road-making. He was an American, of Scottish descent. In 1819 he published _A Practical Essay on the Scientific Repair and Preservation of Public Roads_, and in 1820, _Remarks on the Present State of Road-making_. How little science was thought to have to do with the roads may be judged from the fact, that under the heading of Roads, the old _Encyclopædia Britannica_ of 1797 has not a word to say. "Road-making!" one may suppose a surveyor of that period to have said, "any fool can make a road. If one finds a hole anywhere, clap a stone into it."