"I had the most disagreeable journey I ever experienced the night after I left you, owing to the new improved patent coach, a vehicle loaded with iron trappings and the greatest complication of unmechanical contrivances jumbled together, that I have ever witnessed. The coach swings sideways, with a sickly sway without any vertical spring; the point of suspense bearing upon an arch called a spring, though it is nothing of the sort, The severity of the jolting occasioned me such disorder, that I was obliged to stop at Axminster and go to bed very ill. However, I was able next day to proceed in a post-chaise. The landlady in the London Inn, at Exeter, assured me that the passengers who arrived every night were in general so ill that they were obliged to go supperless to bed; and, unless they go back to the old-fashioned coach, hung a little lower, the mail-coaches will lose all their custom."*[7] We may briefly refer to the several stages of improvement --if improvement it could be called--in the most frequented highways of the kingdom, and to the action of the legislature with reference to the extension of turnpikes. The trade and industry of the country had been steadily improving; but the greatest obstacle to their further progress was always felt to be the disgraceful state of the roads. As long ago as the year 1663 an Act was passed*[8] authorising the first toll-gates or turnpikes to be erected, at which collectors were stationed to levy small sums from those using the road, for the purpose of defraying the needful expenses of their maintenance. This Act, however, only applied to a portion of the Great North Road between London and York, and it authorised the new toll-bars to be erected at Wade's Mill in Hertfordshire, at Caxton in Cambridgeshire, and at Stilton in Huntingdonshire.*[9] The Act was not followed by any others for a quarter of a century, and even after that lapse of time such Acts as were passed of a similar character were very few and far between.