Some of the companies were short-sighted enough to refuse what would have been remunerative work offered by the Post Office. On one short line of 23 miles, £3,000 per annum was demanded for the carriage of a night mail; and, although the Office offered to furnish a train of its own, as by law any one was entitled to do, and to pay the appointed tolls, though legally exempt from so doing—such payment to be settled by arbitration—the proposal was rejected. Ultimately, a more circuitous route was adopted at a third of the cost first demanded. There was great need of reorganisation and common-sense rearrangement in these matters. Why, for instance, when carrying a letter between Land's End and John O'Groat's should twenty-one separate contracts, irrespective of engagements with rural messengers and of plans for the conveyance of mail-bags to and from railway stations and post offices, have been required? With a view to the reduction of these extravagant subsidies, Rowland Hill proposed that “Government should, on ample security, and to a limited extent, advance loans on the terms on which it could itself borrow to such companies as were willing to adopt a reasonable tariff of charge for postal services.” He hoped by these means to reduce the annual payments to the companies by about £250,000. The Duke of Argyll, then Postmaster-General, and Mr Hutchinson, Chairman of the Stock Exchange, highly approved of the plan; but, though it evoked much interest, and came up again as a public question more than once in later years, no progress was made. Were State purchase of the railways to become the law of the land, solution of the difficulty might yet be discovered. One of the measures Rowland Hill hoped to see accomplished was the conveyance of mails on one of the principal lines by special trains absolutely limited to Post Office service. The cost would be moderate if the companies could be induced to join in an arrangement under which, the bare additional expense in each instance being ascertained by a neutral authority, a certain fixed multiple of that amount should be paid. Captain (afterwards Sir Douglas) Galton, of the Board of Trade, and Sir William Cubitt heartily approved of the plan, the latter estimating the cost in question at 1s. to 1s. 3d. a mile, and advising that two and a half times that amount should be offered. Under this rule the Post Office would pay less for the whole train than it already paid for a small part of one. The plan of charge by fixed scale found little favour with the companies; but the proposed special mail service was ultimately adopted.