In some cases there was so much difficulty in filling up stages that it was repeatedly necessary to send orders that if no horses were to be found to take the coach over a certain stage, to forward it by post horses. The Norwich mail, through Newmarket, received eightpence a mile, of which two hundred pounds seems to have been advanced to help the proprietors out of difficulties, and to induce them to go on at all; but that mail was very strongly opposed by an excellent day coach, the "Norwich Telegraph," from the "Golden Cross," Charing Cross. So little at this time was the post-office work valued where it interfered with the hours or increased the pace, that a night coach on the same Norwich road as the mail declined to compete, and it was suggested, but not carried out, to put a guard upon a coach, making a contract with him to carry the letters, giving them some advantage for so doing, which would make it worth their while; and a coach at one time was employed to carry the bags between Alton and Gosport, which were brought to the former place by the Poole mail. It did not, however, meet with Mr. Johnson's approval. He says, "I think that the use of coaches in that way goes directly to destroy the regular mail coach system. I think that if any coach from London to Manchester were to be allowed to carry ten outsides, it never would arrive within an hour of the present mail coach, from the interruption which is occasioned by the number of outside passengers, not to speak of the insecurity of the bags." No doubt he was quite right, as a rule; but if he lived to witness the "Telegraph" coach perform with regularity that journey of one hundred and eighty-six miles in eighteen hours, he would have confessed that there might be exceptions to the rule.