Bianconi’s head was not turned by his surprising success. He was not one of your foolish persons who, having hit upon a successful enterprise, leave it to its fate, and heedlessly take their ease. His genius for organisation was exercised now only for the first time. The smallest as well as the greatest matters occupied his attention; yet Bianconi was not a mere business monster, set on making money. He was generous in his gifts for pious objects and the support of schools; nor was he less noted for his profuse and genial hospitality. He had, however, higher claims to the character of a public benefactor. When his cars were generally established, he realised the pleasure of seeing the good they were doing. In a paper read by him at the British Association meeting in 1857, he speaks of the many advantages arising from the speedy and free communication he had set on foot. ‘As the establishment extended, I was surprised and delighted at its commercial and moral importance. I found, as soon as I had opened communication with the interior of the country, the consumption of manufactured goods greatly increased. In the remote parts of Ireland, before my cars ran from Tralee to Cahirciveen in the south, from Galway to Clifden in the west, and from Ballina to Belmullet in the north-west, purchasers were obliged to give eight or nine pence a yard for calico for shirts, which they afterwards bought for three or four pence. The poor people, therefore, who previously could ill afford to buy one shirt, were enabled to buy two for a less price than they had paid for one, and in the same ratio other commodities came into general use at reduced prices.’ The introduction of railways naturally deranged the car traffic. But in 1857, Bianconi had still nine hundred horses, working sixty-seven conveyances, and travelling daily four thousand two hundred and forty-four miles. There was in fact as much car traffic as ever, only changed in many places into cross-roads, and running short distances in connection with railway stations—a fact which verifies what is obvious to everybody; for railways, instead of diminishing the number of horses in the country, as short-sighted people prognosticated, have greatly increased them. Bianconi felt a pride in thinking how through the agency of his cars the fisheries on the west of Ireland had been largely promoted, thereby contributing to the comfort and independence of the people; and he was prouder still to say, for the sake of Ireland, that his conveyances, though travelling night and day, and many of them carrying important mails, had never once been interrupted by any social disorder, and never suffered the slightest injury.