2 IS
The Justices and Commissioners are also authorised to dividethemselves into district meetings, and to empower whom theyplease of their number, to call out the statute-labour, and to ap-point overseers; and they are empowered to accept of pnoney-commutation, instead of actual labour.
Such are the outlines of the general statutes, by which a legis-lative provision has been made, for securing the internal meansof communication, by roads ; and these regulations are in force,excepting in so far as they are altered, in the particular countyacts of Parliament .
As internal commerce increased, and the augmented produceof agriculture and manufactures required more extensive andmore easy and speedy modes of conveyance, it was soon found,that this legal provision of the statute-labour was perfectly ina-dequate to maintain the necessary communication by roads.And accordingly, from about the middle of the last century,private acts of Parliament came to be applied for by the severalcounties, to place the roads upon a different footing, and, by theprivilege of erecting toll-bars, and exacting toli from passengers,to create a fund for forming and upholding the roads, out of amoderate tax paid for their use.
In such a moderate tax, it seems sufficiently equitable, thatthe users of the road should pay, at different rates, in proportionto the tear and w r ear which they respectively occasion ; though,were the tax of any considerable amount, it would thus fallheaviest where it can least easily be borne,—the value of com-modities, transported by roads, being nearly in the inverse pro-portion of their bulk and w'eight. In all the acts, this latterprinciple seems so far complied with, that the rate of toll is aug-mented upon the carriages kept for pleasure by the rich.
It might be equitable, that, wherever the use is enjoyed, itshould be paid for ; but, on roads little frequented, the expenseof collection would eat up the tax, and therefore, toll-bars, 'andcollectors of toll are only admissible on the roads of most pubiieresort. These are called, therefore, toll or turnpike roads ; theothers are designed by-roads ; and while the produce of the tollsis appropriated to the making and repair of the toll-roads, theby-roads are made and upheld by the statute-labour ; sometimes,the labour being exclusively appropriated to particular roads,that of each parish to the part of the road lying within its bound;,or sometimes made transferable (by consent of the managers intlie parish) to other parishes within the county.
The private county acts not only contain, in general, power tncollect taxes, or tolls, at toll-bars, but comprehend and regulatothe statute-labour. It would indeed seem, that while Scotland ' v as but raw and inexperienced in road making, some of thecounties, in their first applications to Parliament , only appliedfor, and obtained a power, to convert the statute-labour into mo-