At the instance of the department at Washington, the general post office agreed to send by the Canadian steamers the correspondence for both the eastern and western States, and also agreed to Smith's request for special trains for the mail service from London to Cork. This special railway service, with its connecting mail boat service across the Irish Channel gave the British public a full business day more to prepare their correspondence for the States. The mails had, in ordinary course, to be prepared in London early Wednesday morning to catch the outgoing steamer which left Liverpool the same evening, but the special train from Dublin to Cork enabled correspondents to hold over their urgent letters until Wednesday evening and send them by the evening mail to Ireland, where connection was made on Thursday morning with the steamer which had left Liverpool on the previous evening. But this was not the only, or perhaps the greatest, of the advantages of the scheme. Transatlantic cables were still in the future, but the telegraphic systems on both sides of the Atlantic were fully developed, and messages for New York or Montreal could be addressed to the steamer, which would deliver them at Father Point, on its way up the St. Lawrence, from there they were sent by telegraph to their destination. One of the leading London papers declared that the plan would save two full days for telegrams, and permit transactions on the stock exchange in London up to Thursday afternoon to be communicated to the stock exchanges in the United States on the Saturday of the following week, and the action taken in these centres transmitted to London by the Canadian steamers leaving Quebec the same day. Having completed these arrangements in London, Smith next addressed himself to the postal administrations of France, Belgium and Prussia. In the month that had elapsed since the negotiations with London had been concluded, the steamers had crossed the Atlantic both ways, and the Canadian postmaster general was able to inform the continental administrations that on the first voyage the mails from Chicago had reached London in twelve days, and that the conveyance from New Orleans, in which France had a special interest, ought to be effected in less than fifteen days. The French government, to whom Smith offered the same terms for conveyance by steamer and railway in Canada as had been accepted in the United States, immediately closed with Smith on these terms, subject to the consent of Great Britain. In a few days Belgium took similar action, while Prussia deferred acceptance until the postmaster general of Canada could confer with the United States.