Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . o turnpike. Whenever new turnpikes were made,they were violently resisted, as the toll was considered an unjustexaction. It was made felony to remove a toll-bar, but it wasnot easy to protect a long line of road against systematic has been estimated that 452 Acts for making and repairingroads were passed in the period 1762-74, yet the engineering ofroads remained a dead art in England. When a blind
Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . o turnpike. Whenever new turnpikes were made,they were violently resisted, as the toll was considered an unjustexaction. It was made felony to remove a toll-bar, but it wasnot easy to protect a long line of road against systematic has been estimated that 452 Acts for making and repairingroads were passed in the period 1762-74, yet the engineering ofroads remained a dead art in England. When a blind carrierproposed to contract for a portion of new turn]Dike his tenderAvas accepted, because it was the lowest; professional engineersdid not undertake ,such work. John Metcalf, or Blind Jack ofKnaresboro, as it happened, was a genius, and performed his- SOCIAL LIFE. 469 1784] contract admirably. But he invented no new method, and no realimprovement was effected till the beginning of the nineteenthcentury, when a new school of engineers proposed radical reforms. Palmers mail coaches, started in 1784, reformed to some Mauextent the postal service, hitherto conducted by boys on post-. SILYEU CUP PRESEXTED TO JOHX PAL3IEU. (By permission of the Corporation of Dath.) horses. Palmer, the lessee of a theatre in Bath and of one InBristol, found that the mail took three days to do a journey heoften did in one ; so he proposed that the Post Office shouldarrange a coach service. The scheme, at first declared impractic-able, was found to work well. The first to run did the journeyfrom Bristol to London in fourteen hours. In 1792 sixteen mailcoaches left the General Post Office daily, and to see the startwas a City sight. The coach carried only five passengers, fourinside and one out, and was accompanied by an armed robbery of mailbags then became a thing of the past. Coaches. 470 AN ERA OF NEW DEPARTVBES. [1742 Inns andFood. In the same 3ear .another important postal reform wase
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