Within two years of the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester line, a tax of one-eighth of a penny per mile for every passenger conveyed on the railway was imposed, and the directors of the Liverpool and Manchester, then struggling into existence, announced that, in consequence of the tax, they would be obliged to charge the public higher fares. By 1840 the Exchequer receipts from the tax amounted to £112,000. Two years later, following on a great public agitation, Peel substituted for the mileage tax a tax of five per cent on receipts from passenger traffic, and in 1844 the tax (which had been especially oppressive on the poorer class of travellers) was abolished in the case of third-class passengers carried at fares not exceeding a penny a mile in "Parliamentary trains," stopping at every station.[42] The local authorities, with Parliamentary sanction, also subjected the railways to a degree of taxation against which {264}Mr G. C. Glynn, chairman of the London and Birmingham Railway, in a speech (at a meeting of his company) quoted by Francis, protested in the following terms: "Then comes the last item of local taxes and parochial rates; these, gentlemen, we do take exception to.... The county assessors and the parties to whom appeal from them is made seem actuated by one principle, namely, to extract every farthing they can from the railway property. We ask no boon, we ask for no favour from Government on this subject; but we do ask for justice." The railways had to submit to the taxation, but they won the day as against certain excessive and, as they considered, intolerable demands made upon them by or on behalf of the Post Office.