35
to infer, '' that the various changes in our corn laws had no effect on the export
"of grain." It is sufficiently apparent, that the legislature can regulate
neither the seasons, nor the depreciation of money; can neither prevent the
augmentation of the people, nor their vast consumption. From the epoch of
the first bounty on corn, in 1689, till 1800, the depreciation of money has
been, in the ratio, of 226 to 562 (r); and from this appreciation, we may
infer, that the dear years of late times were not comparable, in excess, and
misery, to the dear years of the reigns of Anne, and of William. The better
state of our agriculture, at present, the greater activity of our trade, and the
more vigorous interposition of general beneficence, tended, in a high degree,
to mitigate popular distress, and to relieve the general anxiety.
§ XVI. Of its Roads..] Connected with the practice of agriculture, is the
policy of Roads. The Roman people, who excelled in road-making, constructed
roads, within North-Britain, during the first century; during the second they
extended the usefulness of their ways from the Cheviot hills to the Moray
frith (s). After the Roman abdication, neither the Pictish period nor the
Scottish was favourable to the beneficial system of Roads, as the rudeness of
the Picts and the wildness of the Scots did not enable them to perceive the
innumerable advantages of convenient communications. From the accession
of David I. to the demise of Alexander III., the useful policy of the king's
high-ways was perfectly understood as we may learn from the several chartu-
laries. The art of road making was known throughout the same period.
During that era, when so much of the economy of agriculture consisted in the
feeding of flocks and in the change of pasturage, cross roads were chiefly
defective in every district; and we may see, in the chartularies, the monks
applying for the right of passage from the proprietors of the soil, who readily
exchanged temporal accommodation for spiritual favour (t). The earliest
(r) Transactions of the Royal Society of Lond. 1798, p. 176.
(s) The course and the policy of the Roman roads in Northern Britain, were ascertained in
Caledonia, i., 133 to 149.
(t) Caledonia, 804. See the juridical doctrine of ways and passages in Stair's Institutes,
p. 286-7. The notion of this great lawyer was, that " ways are a part of the reservation from
" property and the necessary vestige of the ancient community of the earth. Free ish and entry
" are implied in the very right of property, though not expressed." The truth is as we have
seen above from the chartularies, that the king's high-ways existed as early as the municipal law
of Scotland ; and Lord Stair's notion of a right of passage as an incident of property in the soil,
is contradicted both by the fact and by the practice, during the Scoto-Saxon period of the
Scottish annals.