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.
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