country must undergo in emerging from poverty and barbarism. It is, therefore, one of the most important duties of government to enact such laws, and provide such means, as are requisite for the structure and maintenance of well-made roads throughout the territory under its authority.

M. Storch most correctly says, that, "after giving protection to property and person, a government can bestow on a nation no greater benefit than the improvement of its harbours, canals, and roads."*

Speaking of roads, the Abbé Reynal justly remarks, "Let us travel over all the countries of the earth, and whenever we shall find no facility of travelling from a city to a town, or from a village to a hamlet, we may pronounce the people to be barbarians."

It has been well said by a writer in the first volume of the Communications to the Board of Agriculture, that "the conveniencies and beneficial consequences which result from a free and easy communication between different parts of a country are so various, the advantages of them so generally and so extensively felt by every description of individuals from the highest to the lowest, that no labour or expense should be spared in providing them. Roads, canals, and navigable rivers, may be justly considered as the veins and arteries through which all improvements flow. How many places in almost every country might be rendered

* Cours d'Economie Politique, vol. i. p. 188.

doubly valuable, if access to them were practicable and easy!"

Adam Smith says, "Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expense of carriage, put the remote parts of a country nearly on a level with those in the neighbourhood of a town; they are, upon that account, the greatest of all improvements."

To establish perfect roads throughout a country is an object of no small importance as regards public economy. In proportion as roads are level and hard, will there be a saving of horse labour, a cheaper description of horse may be employed, less food will be consumed, and fewer servants wanted. The expense of travelling, and the charges for the carriage of goods, will be lower. A saving to the public, amounting in the aggregate to a considerable sum, will thus annually take place, to be applied either to the accumulation of national capital, or to some other purpose.

It will be useful, previously to showing what is necessary to be done in order to secure good roads in this country, to mention the conduct of other nations in this branch of domestic economy.

A description of this kind may serve to give a better tone to the ideas of those country gentlemen, who are trustees of the public in the management of its roads, and may encourage them to form a more enlarged, and more correct conception of their duties and their responsibility.

The following quotations are taken from the French Encyclopædia, under the head of Chemin.

The very interesting information they contain will be a sufficient apology for their length :—

"The police of roads does not begin to show itself as worthy of consideration until the prosperous times of Greece. The senate of Athens watched over them. The Lacedæmonians, Thebans, and other states, confided them to the care of the most eminent men. It does not, however, appear that this display of management produced any considerable effect in Greece. It was reserved for a commercial people to observe the benefits of facility of. travelling and transporting goods; hence it is that the invention of paved roads is given to the Carthaginians.

"The Romans did not neglect the example of the Carthaginians, and that part of their labours is not the least glorious to this people. The first road they made was the Via Appia, the second the Via Aurelia, the third the Via Flaminia. The public and the senate held the roads in such estimation, and took so great an interest in them, that under Julius Cæsar the principal cities of Italy all communicated with Rome by paved roads.

"Their roads from that period began to be extended into the provinces.

"During the last African war, the Romans made a road with rectangular broken stones (de cailloux taillés en quarré), from Spain through Gaul to the Alps. Domitius Enoberbus paved the Via Domitia, which led to Savoy, Dauphiny and Provence. The Romans made in Germania another Via Domitia.

"Augustus, when emperor, paid more attention to the great roads than he had done during his consulate. He conducted roads into the Alps; his plan was to continue them to the eastern and western extremities of Europe. He gave orders for making an infinite number in Spain; he enlarged and extended the Via Medina to Gades. At the same time, and through the same mountains, there were opened two roads to Lyons; one of them traversed the Tarentaise, and the other was made in the Alphenin.

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Agrippa seconded Augustus ably in this part of his government. It was at Lyons he began the extension of roads throughout all Gaul.

"There are four of them particularly remarkable for their length, and the difficulty of the country through which they passed. One traversed the mountains of Auvergne, and penetrated to the bottom of Aquitaine. Another was extended to the Rhine at the mouth of the Meuse, and followed the course of the river, to the German Ocean; the third crossed Burgundy, Champagne, and Picardy, and ended at Boulogne-sur-Mer; the fourth extended along the Rhone, entered the bottom of Languedoc, and terminated at Marseilles. From these principal roads there were an infinity of branch roads, namely, to Tréves, Strasburg, Belgrade, &c.

"There were also great roads from the eastern provinces of Europe to Constantinople, and into Croatia, Hungary, Macedonia, and to the mouth of the Danube at Torres.

"The seas were able to cut across the roads undertaken by the Romans, but not to stop them. Witness Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, England, Asia and Africa, the roads of which countries communicated with the roads of Europe by the nearest ports. What labours! when we embrace in one point of view the extent and the difficulties which opposed themselves; the forests opened, the mountains cut through, the hills lowered, the valleys filled up, the marshes drained, and the bridges which were built!" *

The following description of the manner in which the Roman roads were made, is taken from the same work:

"Les grands chemins étoient construits selon la diversité des lieux: ici ils s'avançoient de niveau avec les terres; là ils s'enfonçoient dans les vallons; ailleurs ils s'élevoient à une grande hauteur; partout on les commençoit par deux sillons tracés au cordeau; ces parallèles fixoient la largeur du chemin; on creusoit l'intervalle de ces parallèles; c'étoit dans cette profondeur qu'on étendoit les couches des matériaux du chemin. C'étoit d'abord un ciment de chaux et de sable de l'épaisseur d'un pouce; sur ce ciment, pour première couche, des pierres larges et plates, de dix potices de hauteur, assises les unes sur les autres, et liées par un mortier des plus durs; pour seconde couche, une épaisseur de huit pouces de petites pierres rondes, plus

*French Encyclopædia, article Chemin, folio edit. vol. iii. p. 276.