One of his first lessons in Ireland was, he tells us, the great difference between the pedlar doomed13 to tramp on foot, and his more fortunate fellow who could post or ride on horseback. When he became a small shopkeeper at Carrick, the need of equestrian14 conveyance15 was brought home to him in a still more forcible manner. “I supplied,” he writes, “my Carrick shop with gold-leaf from Waterford, going down in Tom Mahony’s boat to buy it. Carrick-on-Suir is twelve or thirteen miles from Waterford by land, but the windings16 of the river make it twenty-four by water. This boat, then, was the only public conveyance. The time of its departure had to depend upon the tide, and it took four or five hours to make the journey.” One day, going to Waterford by the boat, Bianconi got sodden17 with the wet, and was laid up with cold and pleurisy for a couple of months. This Irish experience was putting him in the right track; and in 1815, when good horses were to be had cheap, in consequence of the peace, he had the courage to start his cars, running at first between Carrick and Clonmel, a distance of some twelve miles. At first Bianconi only contemplated18 carrying the poorer people. There was the aristocratic mail-coach for the people of quality; but greatness was thrust upon him. p. 70In 1830 he carried the mails direct from the post-office, and had bought up some leading coaching lines. In his latter years he had 1,400 horses at work, and daily covered 3,800 miles. Still further, to give the reader an idea of the extent of his business, we may note there were 140 stations for the change of horses, and that these latter consumed from 3,000 to 4,000 tons of hay, and from 30,000 to 40,000 barrels of oats annually19. In England Bianconi could never have made his fortune in this way. In Ireland he appeared at the right time, and was the right man in the right place.
As a benefactor20 to Ireland it is almost impossible to overestimate21 Bianconi’s usefulness. The farmer who formerly22 drove spent three days in making his market; when the cars came into operation one day was sufficient, thereby23 saving two clear days and expense of his horse. Another good object gained was the opening up the resources of the interior of the country. And lastly, there was the civilising effects of the intercommunion created among classes of the country, by means of travelling together on one or other of the Bianconi cars. The way in which the system was organised ensured its success, “I take my drivers,” said Mr. Bianconi at the Cork24 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement25 of Science, “from the lowest grade of the establishment. They are progressively advanced, according to their respective merits, as opportunity offers, and they know that nothing can deprive them of these rewards, and also of a pension of their full wages in cases of old age or accident, unless it be their own wilful26 and improper27 conduct.” The whole establishment must have had a beneficial influence over a large area. Any man found guilty of uttering a falsehood, however venial28, was instantly dismissed, and this consequently insured truth, accuracy, and punctuality. It must be remembered, too, at the time in which Mr. Bianconi commenced his career, the county of Tipperary was much disorganised, owing to the maladministration of the laws, and to the almost total severance29 of the bond which ought to have united the upper and humble30 classes of society. At that time the Catholics were generally looked down upon as beings of an inferior race. A Catholic was not permitted to buy or become possessed31 of land. In his very short autobiography32, Mr. Bianconi thus describes the grievances33 of the Roman Catholics:—
“One of the injustices34 of which the Catholics used to tell p. 71me, was the unfair way in which the Catholics were treated in Clonmel. Amongst others, they relate a practice then in existence. The Protestant shopkeepers, upon a certain day, used to go about the town levying35 a tax upon their Catholic neighbours who attempted to open shops within the town walls of Clonmel. They used to wring36 from each individual from two to four guineas, which they called intrusion money. My informants especially praised an old Mrs. Ryan, now dead, who boldly refused to comply with their demands. The tax-makers, therefore, seized her goods. She afterwards recovered them at law, and her spirited conduct led to the abolition37 of this toll38. We Catholics had at one time to pay a tax upon all bought merchandise, while our more favoured Protestant and Dissenting39 fellow-townsmen were saved not only from a needless expenditure40, but from the galling41 contact with such a class as the toll-gatherers. In the house, 112, Main Street, was the news-room, which I joined. I was greatly struck by the loud and consequential42 talk constantly going on between a Mr. Jephson and a Sir Richard Jones, and two more of their set, whereas I and my fellow-Papists were not allowed to speak above a whisper. This I resolved not to submit to; for I could see no reason why, when I had paid my money in a public place, I should not share all equal rights. Others followed my example; and as we all, Protestants and Papists, indulged in equally noisy declamation43, a stranger entering our news-room would have been puzzled to say which party were the privileged administrators44 of the penal45 code.”
Irish like, Mr. Bianconi managed now and then to have his joke. One day, when he was sending home in a large wooden case a very superior looking-glass, an old lady asked what was in the box thus carefully conveyed. “The Repeal46 of the union,” was Bianconi’s reply. The old woman’s delight and astonishment47 knew no bounds. She knelt down on her knees in the middle of the road, to thank God for having preserved her so long, that at last, in her old days, she should have seen the Repeal of the union. As another illustration, we quote the story of the opposition48 car:—
“His first attempt he thought was going to be a failure; scarcely anybody went by car. People were used to trudging49 along on foot, and they continued to do, thus saving their money, which was more valuable than their time. Another p. 72man would have abandoned the speculation50; but Mr. Bianconi did nothing of the kind. He started an opposition car, at a cheaper rate, which was not known to be his—not even by the rival drivers, who raced against each other for the foremost place. The excitement of the contest, the cheapness of the fare, the occasional free lifts given to passengers, soon began to attract a paying public, and before very long both the cars every day came in full. He had bought a great, strong, yellow horse, as he called him, to run in the opposition car; he gave, he said, £20 for the animal. One evening his own recognised driver came to him in great pride and excitement. ‘You know the great, big, yallah horse under the opposition car? Well, sir, he’ll never run another yard. I broke his heart this night. I raced him from beyant Moore-o’-Barns, and he’ll never thravel agin.’ Mr. Bianconi told me he was obliged to show the greatest gratification at the loss of his beast; but it gave him enough of the opposition car, which there and then came to an end, like the poor horse. The habit of travelling on a car increased among a people when they had become alive to its advantage.”
The main principle on which Bianconi acted was never to despise poor people, or apparently51 small interests. “His great enterprise,” wrote Dr. Cook Taylor, “arose from the problems, how to make a two-wheeled car pay while running for the accommodation of poor districts and poor people, as regularly as the mail-coaches did for the rich; and when that was solved, how to regulate a system of traffic by a network of cars, the cars increasing in size as the traffic required, from the short one-horse car, holding six people, to the long four-horse car, holding twenty people.” One extract more will give the reader Mr. Bianconi’s secret of money-making:—
“I remember when I was earning a shilling a day in Clonmel, I used to live upon eightpence, and that did not prevent the people from making me their mayor. I did the same at Cashel and at Thurles, and that does not prevent me from at present living between the towns, on a property of seven miles circumference52, and on which I pay her Majesty53 £7 2s. 6d. per year, or from being a J.P. or a D.L.
“It gives me sincere pleasure in seeing you follow the sound principle of having your wants within your means. Don’t be fond of changes. It is better for you to be at the head of a small republic than at the foot of a great one.”
p. 73Mrs. O’Connell writes:—
“I may add, as a postscript54, what my father once said to a young Yorkshireman, ‘Keep before the wheels, young man, or they will run over you. Always keep before the wheels.’”
In his way, Mr. Bianconi was a religious man. He and his priest were always on good terms. He did not run his cars on a Sunday, because the Irish, being a religious people, will not travel for business on that day. He also found his horses worked better for one day’s rest in seven. With Daniel O’Connell he was on the most intimate terms, and Sheil was often a guest at his house. He was an out-and-out Liberal, and always maintained that when the Tory landlords saw that they would fail to get one of their own party into parliament, they encouraged their tenants55 to vote for the Home Rule nominee56, in the hope of balking57 the steady-going Liberal who could afford to be honest. “I have known,” writes Mrs. O’Connell, “a great Protestant land-owner boast of having given tacit support to the ultra-Liberal candidate, in the pious58 hope that he could thereby cause mischief59 in the Liberal benches.”
It is not pleasant to read that Bianconi, true friend to Ireland as he was, narrowly escaped the penalty too generally attached to ownership of land in Ireland. It was said that he was marked out to be shot!—it was even thought that the deed had been planned and attempted, and frustrated60 only by the parish priest, who asked him to take a seat in his gig on his way home from Cashel. Bianconi had driven in from Longfield in his own carriage, but he accepted the priest’s invitation and went back with him. It seems there are two roads leading from Cashel towards Longfield House, and the priest chose the longer of the two. “Why do you take this road?” said Bianconi. “I prefer it,” replied the priest, and nothing more was said about it then; but it was suspected that the old priest had heard something, or got some warning, for it afterwards became known that a party of men had that night been watching on the other road. Happily for the credit of Ireland, Bianconi expired peacefully in 1873, at a ripe old age, as is manifest when we state that he was born in 1786. One of his last acts was characteristic. Struck with paralysis61, he discovered, about a week before his death an error of eightpence in the deduction62 for poor-rates out of a large rent cheque. Verily, of such is the kingdom p. 74of Mammon. Mrs. O’Connell, however, has done her best to make her father’s memory fragrant63; but she is a novice64 in the art of book-making, and we must take the will for the deed. Let us hope her countrymen will study the example she holds out to them of a man industrious65, and careful, and economical, and eager for the main chance. It is such men Ireland needs far more than agitators66 for Home Rule. In the colonies no one learns more readily the value of thrift67 than the Irishman, or gives us a finer example of how to reap the golden harvest which it ensures; but in his native land the Irishman loves more to spend money than earn it. Sir Thomas Dargan, the great railway contractor68, was, however, one of those exceptions which teach us how, even in his native land, the poorest Irishman may amass69 a fortune. Young Dargan received a good education, and after leaving school was placed in a surveyor’s office. With little beyond this training, and a character for the strictest integrity, he left Ireland to push his fortunes. His first employment was under Telford, who was then engaged in constructing the Holyhead Road. When this was completed Dargan returned to Ireland, and embarked70 in several minor71 undertakings73, in which he was fortunate enough to gain sufficient to form the nucleus74 of that princely fortune which entitled him to the appellation75 of a millionaire. After the highly successful result of the Great Exhibition of 1851, Mr. Dargan, with the view of developing the industrial resources of his native country, and with a munificence76 certainly without parallel in one who had been “the architect of his own fortune,” resolved on founding an Industrial Exhibition in Dublin, and placed £20,000 in the hands of a committee, consisting of the leading citizens, and empowered them to erect a building, and to defray all the necessary expenses connected with the undertaking72, on the sole condition that no begging-box should be handed found for further contributions. He undertook, moreover, to advance whatever additional sums might be required to carry the enterprise to a successful issue. In fact, before the Exhibition opened (May 12, 1853), Mr. Dargan’s advances are said not to have fallen far short of £100,000.
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1
adverse
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| adj.不利的；有害的；敌对的，不友好的 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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undesirable
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| adj.不受欢迎的，不良的，不合意的，讨厌的；n.不受欢迎的人，不良分子 | |
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pecuniary
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| adj.金钱的；金钱上的 | |
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erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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homage
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| n.尊敬，敬意，崇敬 | |
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calf
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| n.小牛，犊，幼仔，小牛皮 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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illiterate
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| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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dealer
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| n.商人，贩子 | |
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barometers
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| 气压计，晴雨表( barometer的名词复数 ) | |
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prospered
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| 成功，兴旺( prosper的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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equestrian
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| adj.骑马的；n.马术 | |
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conveyance
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| n.(不动产等的)转让，让与；转让证书；传送；运送；表达；（正）运输工具 | |
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windings
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| （道路、河流等）蜿蜒的，弯曲的( winding的名词复数 )； 缠绕( wind的现在分词 )； 卷绕； 转动（把手） | |
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sodden
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| adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑 | |
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18
contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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annually
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| adv.一年一次，每年 | |
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benefactor
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| n. 恩人，行善的人，捐助人 | |
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overestimate
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| v.估计过高，过高评价 | |
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formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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thereby
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| adv.因此，从而 | |
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cork
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| n.软木，软木塞 | |
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advancement
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| n.前进，促进，提升 | |
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wilful
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| adj.任性的，故意的 | |
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improper
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| adj.不适当的，不合适的，不正确的，不合礼仪的 | |
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venial
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| adj.可宽恕的；轻微的 | |
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severance
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| n.离职金；切断 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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autobiography
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| n.自传 | |
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grievances
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| n.委屈( grievance的名词复数 )；苦衷；不满；牢骚 | |
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injustices
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| 不公平( injustice的名词复数 )； 非正义； 待…不公正； 冤枉 | |
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35
levying
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| 征（兵）( levy的现在分词 )； 索取； 发动（战争）； 征税 | |
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wring
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| n.扭绞；v.拧，绞出，扭 | |
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abolition
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| n.废除，取消 | |
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toll
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| n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟) | |
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dissenting
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| adj.不同意的 | |
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expenditure
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| n.(时间、劳力、金钱等)支出；使用，消耗 | |
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galling
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| adj.难堪的,使烦恼的,使焦躁的 | |
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42
consequential
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| adj.作为结果的，间接的；重要的 | |
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declamation
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| n. 雄辩，高调 | |
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administrators
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| n.管理者( administrator的名词复数 )；有管理（或行政）才能的人；（由遗嘱检验法庭指定的）遗产管理人；奉派暂管主教教区的牧师 | |
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45
penal
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| adj.刑罚的；刑法上的 | |
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repeal
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| n.废止，撤消；v.废止，撤消 | |
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47
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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49
trudging
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| vt.& vi.跋涉，吃力地走（trudge的现在分词形式） | |
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50
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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51
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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52
circumference
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| n.圆周，周长，圆周线 | |
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53
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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54
postscript
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| n.附言，又及；(正文后的)补充说明 | |
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55
tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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56
nominee
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| n.被提名者；被任命者；被推荐者 | |
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57
balking
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| n.慢行，阻行v.畏缩不前，犹豫( balk的现在分词 )；（指马）不肯跑 | |
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58
pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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59
mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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60
frustrated
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| adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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61
paralysis
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| n.麻痹(症)；瘫痪(症) | |
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deduction
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| n.减除，扣除，减除额；推论，推理，演绎 | |
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63
fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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64
novice
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| adj.新手的，生手的 | |
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industrious
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| adj.勤劳的，刻苦的，奋发的 | |
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66
agitators
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| n.（尤指政治变革的）鼓动者( agitator的名词复数 )；煽动者；搅拌器；搅拌机 | |
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67
thrift
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| adj.节约，节俭；n.节俭，节约 | |
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contractor
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| n.订约人，承包人，收缩肌 | |
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amass
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| vt.积累，积聚 | |
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embarked
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| 乘船( embark的过去式和过去分词 )； 装载； 从事 | |
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minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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undertakings
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| 企业( undertaking的名词复数 )； 保证； 殡仪业； 任务 | |
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nucleus
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| n.核，核心，原子核 | |
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appellation
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| n.名称，称呼 | |
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munificence
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| n.宽宏大量，慷慨给与 | |
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