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.
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