He had often lamented the fatigue that poor people had to undergo in travelling with burdens from place to place upon foot, and wondered whether some means might not be devised for alleviating their sufferings. Other people would have suggested "the Government!" Why should not the Government give us this, that, and the other,--give us roads, harbours, carriages, boats, nets, and so on. This, of course, would have been a mistaken idea; for where people are too much helped, they invariably lose the beneficent practice of helping themselves. Charles Bianconi had never been helped, except by advice and friendship. He had helped himself throughout; and now he would try to help others.
The facts were patent to everybody. There was not an Irishman who did not know the difficulty of getting from one town to another. There were roads between them, but no conveyances.
There was an abundance of horses in the country, for at the close of the war an unusual number of horses, bred for the army, were thrown upon the market. Then a tax had been levied upon carriages, which sent a large number of jaunting-cars out of employment.
The roads of Ireland were on the whole good, being at that time quite equal, if not superior, to most of those in England. The facts of the abundant horses, the good roads, the number of unemployed outside cars, were generally known; but until Bianconi took the enterprise in hand, there was no person of thought, or spirit, or capital in the country, who put these three things together horses, roads, and cars and dreamt of remedying the great public inconvenience.
It was left for our young Italian carver and gilder, a struggling man of small capital, to take up the enterprise, and show what could be done by prudent action and persevering energy. Though the car system originally "grew out of his back," Bianconi had long been turning the subject over in his mind. His idea was, that we should never despise small interests, nor neglect the wants of poor people. He saw the mail-coaches supplying the requirements of the rich, and enabling them to travel rapidly from place to place. "Then," said he to himself, "would it not be possible for me to make an ordinary two-wheeled car pay, by running as regularly for the accommodation of poor districts and poor people?"When Mr. Wallace, chairman of the Select Committee on Postage, in 1838, asked Mr. Bianconi, "What induced you to commence the car establishment?" his answer was, "I did so from what I saw, after coming to this country, of the necessity for such cars, inasmuch as there was no middle mode of conveyance, nothing to fill up the vacuum that existed between those who were obliged to walk and those who posted or rode. My want of knowledge of the language gave me plenty of time for deliberation, and in proportion as Igrew up with the knowledge of the language and the localities, this vacuum pressed very heavily upon my mind, till at last Ihit upon the idea of running jaunting-cars, and for that purpose I commenced running one between Clonmel and Cahir."[2]
What a happy thing it was for Bianconi and Ireland that he could not speak with facility,--that he did not know the language or the manners of the country! In his case silence was "golden."Had he been able to talk like the people about him, he might have said much and done little, --attempted nothing and consequently achieved nothing. He might have got up a meeting and petitioned Parliament to provide the cars, and subvention the car system; or he might have gone amongst his personal friends, asked them to help him, and failing their help, given up his idea in despair, and sat down grumbling at the people and the Government.
But instead of talking, he proceeded to doing, thereby illustrating Lessona's maxim of Volere e potere. After thinking the subject fully over, he trusted to self-help. He found that with his own means, carefully saved, he could make a beginning;and the beginning once made, included the successful ending.
The beginning, it is true, was very small. It was only an ordinary jaunting-car, drawn by a single horse, capable of accommodating six persons. The first car ran between Clonmel and Cahir, a distance of about twelve miles, on the 5th of July, 1815--a memorable day for Bianconi and Ireland. Up to that time the public accommodation for passengers was confined to a few mail and day coaches on the great lines of road, the fares by which were very high, and quite beyond the reach of the poorer or middle-class people.
People did not know what to make of Bianconi's car when it first started. There were, of course, the usual prophets of disaster, who decided that it "would never do." Many thought that no one would pay eighteen-pence for going to Cahir by car when they could walk there for nothing? There were others who thought that Bianconi should have stuck to his shop, as there was no connection whatever between picture-gilding and car-driving!
The truth is, the enterprise at first threatened to be a failure!
Scarcely anybody would go by the car. People preferred trudging on foot, and saved their money, which was more valuable to them than their time. The car sometimes ran for weeks without a passenger. Another man would have given up the enterprise in despair. But this was not the way with Bianconi. He was a man of tenacity and perseverance. What should he do but start an opposition car? Nobody knew of it but himself; not even the driver of the opposition car. However, the rival car was started. The races between the car-drivers, the free lifts occasionally given to passengers, the cheapness of the fare, and the excitement of the contest, attracted the attention of the public. The people took sides, and before long both cars came in full. Fortunately the "great big yallah horse" of the opposition car broke down, and Bianconi had all the trade to himself.
