2
A TREATISE ON ROADS.
country must undergo in emerging from povertyand barbarism. It is, therefore, one of the mostimportant duties of government to enact such laws,and provide such means, as are requisite for thestructure and maintenance of well-made roadsthroughout the territory under its authority.
M. Storch most correctly says, that, “ aftergiving protection to property and person, a govern-ment can bestow on a nation no greater benefitthan the improvement of its harbours, canals, androads.” *
Speaking of roads, the Abbe Reynal justly re-marks, “ Let us travel over all the countries of theearth, and whenever we shall find no facility oftravelling from a city to a town, or from a villageto a hamlet, we may pronounce the people to bebarbarians.”
It has been well said by a writer in the firstvolume of the Communications to the Board ofAgriculture, that “ the conveniencies and beneficialconsequences which result from a free and easycommunication between different parts of a countryare so various, the advantages of them so generallyand so extensively felt by every description of in-dividuals from the highest to the lowest, that nolabour or expense should be spared in providingthem. Roads, canals, and navigable rivers, maybe justly considered as the veins and arteriesthrough which all improvements flow. How manyplaces in almost every country might be rendered