“Hundreds of pack-horses,” he continues, “panniers, whifflers, coaches, wagons, wains, carts, or whatsoever others,” fought and schemed for precedence; and a horseman, his horse already exhausted by a long and tedious journey, might, at the entrance to a town, especially on market day, be compelled to go out of his way twenty times in one mile, owing to the peevishness of these whifflers and market-folk. “I have often known many travellers,” he continues, “and myself very often, to have been necessitated to stand stock still behind a standing cart or wagon, on most beastly and unsufferable wet wayes, to the great endangering of our horses and neglect of public business: nor durst we adventure to stirr (for most imminent danger of those deep rutts and unreasonable ridges) till it has pleased Mr. Carter to jog on, which we have taken very kindly.” His plan was to once get the roads in good repair, and then, he says, with the employment of “day men” to every five miles or so, they could be easily kept in order. The prospect induces him to rise to poetry: “First, let the ways be regularly brought To artificial form, and truly wrought; So that we can suppose them firmly mended, And in all needful points, the work well ended, That not a stone’s amiss; but all complete, All lying smooth, round, firm, and wondrous neat.” So far good. But then comes the heavy traffic to destroy the good work: “Then comes a gang of heavy-laden wains Of carts and wagons, spoiling all our pains.” But he is ready for this. His proposed “day men” by at once filling up the ruts would make the damage good. All these things he commends to the notice of his Majesty with the concluding lines: “There’s only one thing yet worth thinking on, Which is, to put this work in execution.” That it was _not_ “put into execution” is a matter of history.