Amidst these efforts to procure that cheapness of conveyance which would justify greater frequency of despatch, it was clearly of importance to obtain for the conveyance of the mails the greatest practicable speed, though the public can be little aware how many difficulties, direct and incidental, attend acceleration. In the year 1851 we called upon the North Western Company to accelerate its mail trains, but met with resistance. In a conference with Captain Huish, the manager of the line, while explicitly insisting on our right to require the change, I expressed a wish to meet the convenience of the company as far as possible, and proposed a modification, which I hoped would remove objections. After a week's consideration, the company persisted in its refusal, disputing our right to require them to carry mails at a speed exceeding twenty-seven miles an hour, including stoppages. This view unfortunately was supported by our solicitor. Meanwhile, however, at the desire of the Postmaster-General, I made a compromise with the company until the opinion of the Crown officers should be obtained. By this, when given, our right was sustained. Even the amount of acceleration thus procured proved highly valuable, was very popular in the City, and produced some strong expressions of thanks; but before the end of the year I procured sanction for the gradual introduction of a measure to run the mails, at least on the long lines of road, at express speed. The work of acceleration was quickened by a manœuvre of the Great Northern Railway Company, which, in July of that year (1851), spontaneously began to run a train at night-mail time, and at such speed as to outstrip the mail train on the North Western line. Believing that the object was to force upon us, through the public voice, the use of this train, of course at a large expense, I applied to the North Western Company for such acceleration on their line as would obviate the demand. It was at this time that I first suggested what are now called limited mails, though the expedient was not adopted till some years afterwards.[109] The plan of limited mails, when brought into operation, raised the speed along the North Western route to forty miles an hour, including stoppages, a rate the very notion of which would have been regarded thirty years before as a madman's dream.