What a kingdom would England be if this were performed in all the
counties of it! And yet I believe it is feasible, even in the
worst. I have narrowly deserved all the considerable ways in that
unpassable county of Sussex, which (especially in some parts in the
wild, as they very properly call it, of the county) hardly admits
the country people to travel to markets in winter, and makes corn
dear at market because it cannot be brought, and cheap at the
farmer's house because he cannot carry it to market; yet even in
that county would I undertake to carry on this proposal, and that to
great advantage, if backed with the authority of an Act of
Parliament.

I have seen in that horrible country the road, sixty to a hundred
yards broad, lie from side to side all poached with cattle, the land
of no manner of benefit, and yet no going with a horse, but at every
step up to the shoulders, full of sloughs and holes, and covered
with standing water. It costs them incredible sums of money to
repair them; and the very places that are mended would fright a
young traveller to go over them. The Romans mastered this work, and
by a firm causeway made a highway quite through this deep country,
through Darkin in Surrey to Stansted, and thence to Okeley, and so
on to Arundel; its name tells us what it was made of (for it was
called Stone Street), and many visible parts of it remain to this
day.

Now would any lord of a manor refuse to allow forty yards in breadth
out of that road I mentioned, to have the other twenty made into a
firm, fair, and pleasant causeway over that wilderness of a country?

Or would not any man acknowledge that putting this country into a