and to
civilisation and commerce, and among their other advantages, they
opened markets for the fresh fish caught by the fishermen of Galway,
Clifden, Westport, and other places, enabling them to be sold
throughout the country on the day after they were caught. They also
opened the magnificent scenery of Ireland to tourists, and enabled them
to visit Bantry Bay, Killarney, South Donegal, and the wilds of
Connemara in safety, all the year round.

Bianconi's service to the public was so great, and it was done with so
much tact, that nobody had a word to say against him. Everybody was his
friend. Not even the Whiteboys would injure him or the mails he
carried. He could say with pride, that in the most disturbed times his
cars had never been molested. Even during the Whiteboy insurrection,
though hundreds of people were on the roads at night, the traffic went
on without interference. At the meeting of the British Association in
1857, Bianconi said: "My conveyances, many of them carrying very
important mails, have been travelling during all hours of the day and
night, often in lonely and unfrequented places; and during the long
period of forty-two years that my establishment has been in existence,
the slightest injury has never been done by the people to my property,
or that entrusted to my care; and this fact gives me greater pleasure
than any pride I might feel in reflecting upon the other rewards of my
life's labour."

Of course Bianconi's cars were found of great use for carrying the
mails. The post was, at the beginning of his enterprise, very badly
served in Ireland, chiefly by foot and horse posts. When the first car
was run from Clonmel to Cahir, Bianconi offered to carry the mail for
half the price then paid for "sending it alternately by a mule and a
bad horse." The post was afterwards found to come regularly instead of
irregularly to Cahir; and the practice of sending the mails by
Bianconi's cars increased from year to year. Dispatch won its way to
popularity in Ireland as elsewhere, and Bianconi lived to see all the
cross-posts in Ireland arranged on his system.

The postage authorities frequently used the cars of Bianconi as a means
of competing with the few existing mail-coaches. For instance, they
asked him to compete for carrying the post between Limerick and Tralee,
then carried by a mail-coach. Before tendering, Bianconi called on the
contractor, to induce him to give in to the requirements of t