From the day that railways were opened in England, the Post Office has resorted to them for the conveyance of its mails. The Liverpool and Manchester railway was opened for traffic, as already stated, on the 14th of September, 1830; on the same day the Post Office commenced using it, and mails were conveyed on it four times a day in each direction. The same happened at the opening of the Grand Junction between Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham on the 6th July, 1837; upon the completion of the line between London and Birmingham, on the 20th September, 1838, and so in succession with every leading railway throughout the kingdom. The Post Office soon became jealous of the power and position of railway companies, and the expression of its jealousy culminated in the introduction, at its instance, of a bill into Parliament, in 1838, “for the conveyance of mails by railway.” The bill proposed to give power to the Post Office to run its own trains upon any line of railway open for traffic, without payment of toll. It was further to be authorised to remove all obstacles in the shape of passenger or other carriages out of the way of its trains; pains and penalties were to be amerced on the servants of companies if the “lawful commands” of the postal officials were disobeyed. The aid of the railway plant and of railway officials was commanded, and the remuneration to the companies for these services was to be this much, and no more—_the cost of the wear, tear and deterioration that Post Office trains inflicted upon the rails!_ Mr. Labouchere, now Lord Taunton, introduced the bill, and in doing so said that the country was at the mercy of railway companies which had bound the land in bonds of iron—bonds from which it was necessary that the land should be freed by the action of Parliament. Mr. Rice, afterwards Lord Monteagle, prince of jobbers, and for many years enjoying the sinecure and emoluments of Comptroller of the Exchequer, an office abolished at his death, warned all railway directors to beware of opposing the bill, threatening them, on the part of the Government, of which he was then a member, with more stringent measures, if they were so ill-advised. The bill, nevertheless, met with vigorous opposition; at its head was Mr. George Carr Glyn, chairman of the London and Birmingham Company, and then, as now, the honoured member for the Borough of Kendal, whom Mr. John Francis truthfully describes in the dedication of his History of the English Railway[26], as “one of the earliest, as well as one of the most efficient allies of the system;”