in town and country, and again giving the highways their place in ministering to public convenience and enjoyment? Yet this is the practical—the socially and nationally important lesson—which is brought to us by reminiscences of the few years in which the mechanical vehicle has been steadily asserting itself, in the face of unreasoning prejudice and pig-headed obstruction. The keenest opposition has come from the squire, the farmer, and the innkeeper, the very people for whom the development of power traction on the roads is certain to work out almost incalculable good.
It has always been so. Although our reminiscences carry us back but a very few years, we know that the idea of mechanical traction on roads germinated three-quarters of a century ago, and took practical shape both in England and Scotland; of this the Automobile Club possesses abundant proof, both literary and pictorial. And history tells how determined were the efforts of the obstructionists of those days to crush out the power vehicle, the opposition being carried even to the length of piling large stones on the road, or cutting ditches across it, to ruin the enterprise, by wrecking the vehicles, even at risk to human life. These tactics were only too successful, and delayed a great public advance in locomotion for more than half a century.
But before the Act of 1896 was passed there were a few automobile Hampdens, who were prepared to face the terrors of the law in order to bring the new locomotion into public notice, and to show to their fellow-citizens what was before them, if only obsolete statutes could be rolled out of the path of progress. And in these reminiscences they deserve to be the first to speak for themselves. Whether there were others I know not, but three I do know, two in England and one in Scotland. First I cull the following from the Hon. Evelyn Ellis. He relates that he first purchased a 'Panhard' 5 h.-p. two-cylinder car in 1894 for use in France, and when in 1895 Mr. Shaw Lefevre was about to bring in the Light Locomotives Act, but was prevented by the resignation of the Government,
