The first restrictions to be put in force were those levelled against the heavy road-traffic of the time of James I. By them, four-wheeled carts and waggons were, in 1622, absolutely prohibited, and loads above 20 cwt. forbidden: “No carrier or other person whatsoever shall travel with any wain, cart, or carriage with more than two wheels, nor above the weight of twenty hundred, nor shall draw any wain, cart, or carriage with more than five horses at once.” This was confirmed in 1629. It seems an arbitrary and merely freakish act, thus to interfere with the traffic of the roads; but we must remember what those roads were like, and consider that our ancestors were not irrational puppets, but living, breathing, and reasoning men, whose doings, when considered in relation with the times, the limitations that obscured their view, and the disabilities that surrounded them, were eminently logical. It is not easy to be wiser than one’s generation, and those who are have generally been accounted geniuses by later ages and madmen by their contemporaries. Even when ideas are of the enlightened kind, they are not readily to be applied when greatly in advance of their era; for stubborn facts, difficult to remove or improve away, commonly delay the practical application of the most brilliant theories. If a seventeenth-century MacAdam had arisen to preach the gospel of good roads, instead of repressive regulations for bad ones, he would still have had to overcome the difficulty of finding road-metal in districts far removed from stone; and how he would or could have surmounted that impediment when all roads were bad and the transport of materials from a distance expensive and tedious, we will leave the reader to determine. To look upon our forbears, therefore, as though they were strange creatures whose movements were not governed by as much common sense as our own would be absurd. The reason for the regulations proclaimed in 1622 and again in 1629 was set forth in the statement that the four-wheeled waggons used up to that time had, with their excessive burdens, so galled the highways and the very foundations of bridges that they had become common nuisances.