farmer. Further, in consequence of the increase of population, the
demand for agricultural products increased in such measure that from 1760
to 1834, 6,840,540 acres of waste land were reclaimed; and, in spite of
this, England was transformed from a grain exporting to a grain importing
country.

The same activity was developed in the establishment of communication.
From 1818 to 1829, there were built in England and Wales, 1,000 English
miles of roadway of the width prescribed by law, 60 feet, and nearly all
the old roads were reconstructed on the new system of M'Adam. In
Scotland, the Department of Public Works built since 1803 nearly 900
miles of roadway and more than 1,000 bridges, by which the population of
the Highlands was suddenly placed within reach of civilisation. The
Highlanders had hitherto been chiefly poachers and smugglers; they now
became farmers and hand-workers. And, though Gaelic schools were
organised for the purpose of maintaining the Gaelic language, yet Gaelic-
Celtic customs and speech are rapidly vanishing before the approach of
English civilisation. So, too, in Ireland; between the counties of Cork,
Limerick, and Kerry, lay hitherto a wilderness wholly without passable
roads, and serving, by reason of its inaccessibility, as the refuge of
all criminals and the chief protection of the Celtic Irish nationality in
the South of Ireland. It has now been cut through by public roads, and
civilisation has thus gained admission even to this savage region. The
whole British Empire, and especially England, which, sixty years ago, had
as bad roads as Germany or France then had, is now covered by a network
of the finest roadways; and these, too, like almost everything else in
England, are the work of private enterprise, the State having done very
little in this direction.

Before 1755 England possessed almost no canals. In that year a canal was