He had often lamented the fatigue that poor people had to undergo in travelling with burdens from place to place upon foot, and wondered whether some means might not be devised for alleviating their sufferings. Other people would have suggested "the Government!" Why should not the Government give us this, that, and the other,--give us roads, harbours, carriages, boats, nets, and so on. This, of course, would have been a mistaken idea; for where people are too much helped, they invariably lose the beneficent practice of helping themselves. Charles Bianconi had never been helped, except by advice and friendship. He had helped himself throughout; and now he would try to help others. The facts were patent to everybody. There was not an Irishman who did not know the difficulty of getting from one town to another. There were roads between them, but no conveyances. There was an abundance of horses in the country, for at the close of the war an unusual number of horses, bred for the army, were thrown upon the market. Then a tax had been levied upon carriages, which sent a large number of jaunting-cars out of employment. The roads of Ireland were on the whole good, being at that time quite equal, if not superior, to most of those in England. The facts of the abundant horses, the good roads, the number of unemployed outside cars, were generally known; but until Bianconi took the enterprise in hand, there was no person of thought, or spirit, or capital in the country, who put these three things together horses, roads, and cars and dreamt of remedying the great public inconvenience. It was left for our young Italian carver and gilder, a struggling man of small capital, to take up the enterprise, and show what could be done by prudent action and persevering energy. Though the car system originally "grew out of his back," Bianconi had long been turning the subject over in his mind. His idea was, that we should never despise small interests, nor neglect the wants of poor people. He saw the mail-coaches supplying the requirements of the rich, and enabling them to travel rapidly from place to place. "Then," said he to himself, "would it not be possible for me to make an ordinary two-wheeled car pay, by running as regularly for the accommodation of poor districts and poor people?"