benefit.

Here I beg the reader's favour for a small digression.

I am not proposing this as an undertaker, or setting a price to the
public for which I will perform it, like one of the projectors I
speak of, but laying open a project for the performance, which,
whenever the public affairs will admit our governors to consider of,
will be found so feasible that no question they may find undertakers
enough for the performance; and in this undertaking age I do not
doubt but it would be easy at any time to procure persons at their
own charge to perform it for any single county, as a pattern and
experiment for the whole kingdom.

The proposal is as follows:- First, that an Act of Parliament be
made with liberty for the undertakers to dig and trench, to cut down
hedges and trees, or whatever is needful for ditching, draining and
carrying off water, cleaning, enlarging and levelling the roads,
with power to lay open or enclose lands; to encroach into lands;
dig, raise, and level fences; plant and pull up hedges or trees (for
the enlarging, widening, and draining the highways), with power to
turn either the roads or watercourses, rivers and brooks, as by the
directors of the works shall be found needful, always allowing
satisfaction to be first made to the owners of such lands (either by
assigning to them equivalent lands or payment in money, the value to
be adjusted by two indifferent persons to be named by the Lord
Chancellor or Lord Keeper for the time being), and no watercourse to
be turned from any water-mill without satisfaction first made both
to the landlord and tenant.