Page:Remarks on the Present System of Road Making (1823).djvu/179

 turnpike road. I undertook to direct the taking of this gravel out, and to level the siftings and dirt in a uniform manner, and lay all the soil again upon the top; by which means the land was in no degree injured, but, in fact, considerably benefited, by being loosened to that depth. A great many hundreds of cubic yards of clean-sifted and picked gravel were prepared in numerous square stacks, and the trustees at a meeting, or else their clerk, were informed, that this gravel his Grace offered to the road at the mere cost of labour, without any thing for the gravel, or the temporary damage to the occupiers of the land. After a long time of hesitation, the trustees or their clerk returned an answer, that they did not like that mode, alleging that their surveyor ought to be allowed to dig materials where and how he liked, and they would not have this gravel: it lay there, some of it for two or three years, upon the land. In that time a number of private roads were making of his Grace's, and a good deal of it was used on these. The main road became progressively worse and worse, and the post-office caused the parish to be indicted. I was then surveyor, and made an application to the trustees, stating the circumstances the road was under: that road-trust is thirteen miles in length, two of which, or rather more, are in the parish of Woburn; there is a toll-gate in the parish which the inhabitants are liable to all the toll of; some of them, even in going and returning to and from their fields: the trustees had exacted very strictly the half of the statute duty, although the parish had, I think, eleven miles of private roads to maintain. I mention this circumstance to show there was no default on the part of the parish; and it was afterwards proved, that they had done their duty; the trustees merely laughed at the application, and said, that they had nothing to do with it: we must repair the road, and till we did so, they would not lay out a farthing upon