[66] Letter to Mr. Illingworth, September 25th, 1825. The reports made to the directors and officers of the company, which we have seen, contain the details of the operations carried on at the mines, but they are as dry and uninteresting as such reports usually are, and furnish no materials calculated to illustrate the subject of the text. [67] In a letter to Mr. Illingworth, then resident at Bogotá, dated the 24th of March, 1826, Robert wrote as follows: "Nothing but the fullest consent of my partners in England could induce me to stay in this country, and the assurance that no absolute necessity existed to call me home. I must also have the consent of my father. I know that he must have suffered severely from my absence, but that having been extended so far beyond the period he was led to expect, may have induced him to curtail his plans, which, had they been accomplished, as they would have been by my assistance, would have placed us both in a situation far superior to any thing that I can hope for as the servant of an association however wealthy and liberal. What I might do in England is perhaps known to myself only; it is difficult, therefore, for the association to calculate upon rewarding me to the full extent of my prospects at home. My prosperity is involved in that of my father, whose property was sacrificed in laying the foundations of an establishment for me; his capital being invested in a concern which requires the greatest attention, and which, with our personal superintendence, could not fail to secure that independence which forms so principally the object of all our toil." [68] Mr. Booth's Account, p. 70-1. While concurring with Mr. Rastrick in recommending "the stationary reciprocating system as the best" if it was the directors' intention to make the line complete at once, so as to accommodate the traffic expected by them, or a quantity approaching to it (_i.e._, 3750 tons of goods and passengers from Liverpool toward Manchester, and 3950 tons from Manchester toward Liverpool), Mr. Walker added, "but if any circumstances should induce the directors to proceed by degrees, and to proportion the power of conveyance to the demand, then we recommend locomotive engines upon the line generally; and two fixed engines upon Rainhill and Sutton planes, to draw up the locomotive engines as well as the goods and carriages;" and "if on any occasion the trade should get beyond the supply of locomotives, the horse might form a temporary substitute." As, however, it was the directors' determination, with a view to the success of their experiment, to open the line complete for working, they felt that it would be unadvisable to adopt this partial experiment; and it was still left for them to decide whether they would adopt or not the substantial recommendation of the reporting engineers in favor of the stationary-engine system for the complete accommodation of the expected traffic.