"The question came upon me," said Bianconi, "by surprise, and Idid not at the time answer it. But another day he repeated his question, and I replied, 'Well, it was because, while the big and the little were fighting, I crept up between them, carried out my enterprise, and obliged everybody.'" This, however, did not satisfy Mr. Drummond, who asked Bianconi to write down for him an autobiography, containing the incidents of his early life down to the period of his great Irish enterprise. Bianconi proceeded to do this, writing down his past history in the occasional intervals which he could snatch from the immense business which he still continued personally to superintend. But before the "Drummond memoir" could be finished Mr. Drummond himself had ceased to live, having died in 1840, principally of overwork.
What he thought of Bianconi, however, has been preserved in his Report of the Irish Railway Commission of 1838, written by Mr.
Drummond himself, in which he thus speaks of his enterprising friend in starting and conducting the great Irish car establishment:--"With a capital little exceeding the expense of outfit he commenced. Fortune, or rather the due reward of industry and integrity, favoured his first efforts. He soon began to increase the number of his cars and multiply routes, until his establishment spread over the whole of Ireland. These results are the more striking and instructive as having been accomplished in a district which has long been represented as the focus of unreclaimed violence and barbarism, where neither life nor property can be deemed secure. Whilst many possessing a personal interest in everything tending to improve or enrich the country have been so misled or inconsiderate as to repel by exaggerated statements British capital from their doors, this foreigner chose Tipperary as the centre of his operations, wherein to embark all the fruits of his industry in a traffic peculiarly exposed to the power and even to the caprice of the peasantry. The event has shown that his confidence in their good sense was not ill-grounded.
"By a system of steady and just treatment he has obtained a complete mastery, exempt from lawless intimidation or control, over the various servants and agents employed by him, and his establishment is popular with all classes on account of its general usefulness and the fair liberal spirit of its management.
The success achieved by this spirited gentleman is the result, not of a single speculation, which might have been favoured by local circumstances, but of a series of distinct experiments, all of which have been successful."When the railways were actually made and opened, they ran right through the centre of Bianconi's long-established systems of communication. They broke up his lines, and sent them to the right and left. But, though they greatly disturbed him, they did not destroy him. In his enterprising hands the railways merely changed the direction of the cars. He had at first to take about a thousand horses off the road, with thirty-seven vehicles, travelling 2446 miles daily. But he remodelled his system so as to run his cars between the railway-stations and the towns to the right and left of the main lines.
He also directed his attention to those parts of Ireland which had not before had the benefit of his conveyances. And in thus still continuing to accommodate the public, the number of his horses and carriages again increased, until, in 1861, he was employing 900 horses, travelling over 4000 miles daily; and in 1866, when he resigned his business, he was running only 684miles daily below the maximum run in 1845, before the railways had begun to interfere with his traffic.
His cars were then running to Dungarvan, Waterford, and Wexford in the south-west of Ireland; to Bandon, Rosscarbery, Skibbereen, and Cahirciveen, in the south; to Tralee, Galway, Clifden, Westport, and Belmullet in the west; to Sligo, Enniskillen, Strabane, and Letterkenny in the north; while, in the centre of Ireland, the towns of Thurles, Kilkenny, Birr, and Ballinasloe were also daily served by the cars of Bianconi.
At the meeting of the British Association, held in Dublin in 1857, Mr. Bianconi mentioned a fact which, he thought, illustrated the increasing prosperity of the country and the progress of the people. It was, that although the population had so considerably decreased by emigration and other causes, the proportion of travellers by his conveyances continued to increase, demonstrating not only that the people had more money, but that they appreciated the money value of time, and also the advantages of the car system established for their accommodation.
Although railways must necessarily have done much to promote the prosperity of Ireland, it is very doubtful whether the general passenger public were not better served by the cars of Bianconi than by the railways which superseded them. Bianconi's cars were on the whole cheaper, and were always run en correspondence, so as to meet each other; whereas many of the railway trains in the south of Ireland, under the competitive system existing between the several companies, are often run so as to miss each other.
The present working of the Irish railway traffic provokes perpetual irritation amongst the Irish people, and sufficiently accounts for the frequent petitions presented to Parliament that they should be taken in hand and worked by the State.
