ABSTRACT
The fundamental principle of the turnpike system was that of transferring the cost of repairing main roads from the parish to the users. The mediaeval practice, under which the roads were maintained by religious houses, private benevolence and individual landowners, had, of course, still left the common law obligation that each and every parish should keep in repair the roads within its own particular limits, the Act of Philip and Mary, with its imposition of statute duty, being, in effect, only a means for the regulation and carrying out of such requirement. Objections to turnpikes had been further fomented by demagogues who went about the country proclaiming that the gates which were being put up were part of a design planned by the Government to enslave the people and deprive them of their liberty. The defects of the system thus brought about were well recognised by various authorities at a time when they were still being experienced to the full.
