There is the dampness of the climate; there is the extraordinary diversity of soil within a comparatively small area, so that road-making material continually differs within a few miles--for England is, of all European countries, that in which there is crowded upon a small space the greatest, sharpest, and most frequent diversity of soil and landscape; there is the increasing density of population in modern times, which has had a profound effect upon our road system. There is the political factor of Parliament; for since the defeat of the monarchy in the seventeenth century no direct order could be immediately obeyed until there quite recently grew up the new powers of administration. Between, say, 1660 and the Premiership of the late Lord Salisbury we may say that any important public right, including the making of a new way and expropriation of land for it, fell under no immediate authority but had to be referred to the lengthy and expensive process of a Committee, called Parliamentary, through which the oligarchy of Great Britain worked. All these things have affected the development of the English Road, but most of all, let it always be remembered, these two main causes, which have been, in my opinion, far too little recognized--the waterways, peculiar to this island, and the absence of modern strategic necessity, also peculiar to this island. CHAPTER IX FIVE STAGES _The “Potential” in Political Geography Examples: The Primitive Trackways: The Roman Road System: The Earlier Mediaeval Period: The Later Mediaeval Period: The Turnpike Era._ i Let us next turn to a very rough sketch of the development of the history of the English Road: the stages through which its development has passed, measured, not from cause to effect, but in time. Before turning to this I would first define the use of a certain word already used which will recur and may be unfamiliar to some of my readers. It is a word taken as a metaphor from physical science, and one of the utmost value in political geography. It is the word “potential.”