I hope no man would be so weak now as to imagine that by lands lying
open to the road, to be assigned to the undertakers, I should mean
that all Finchley Common should be enclosed and sold for this work;
but, lest somebody should start such a preposterous objection, I
think it is not improper to mention, that wherever a highway is to
be carried over a large common, forest, or waste, without a hedge on
either hand for a certain distance, there the several parishes shall
allot the directors a certain quantity of the common, to lie
parallel with the road, at a proportioned number of feet to the
length and breadth of the said road--consideration also to be had to
the nature of the ground; or else, giving them only room for the
road directly shall suffer them to inclose in any one spot so much
of the said common as shall be equivalent to the like quantity of
land lying by the road. Thus where the land is good and the
materials for erecting a causeway near, the less land may serve; and
on the contrary, the more; but in general allowing them the quantity
of land proportioned to the length of the causeway, and forty rods
in breadth: though where the land is poor, as on downs and plains,
the proportion must be considered to be adjusted by the country.

Another point for the dimensions of roads should be adjusted; and
the breadth of them, I think, cannot be less than thus:

From London every way ten miles the high post-road to be built full
forty feet in breadth and four feet high, the ditches eight feet
broad and six feet deep, and from thence onward thirty feet, and so
in proportion.

Cross-roads to be twenty feet broad, and ditches proportioned; no
lanes and passes less than nine feet without ditches.