The Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the

232 LIFE OF SIR ROWLAND HILL. [1851-4
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
manoeuvre 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 after-
wards.*
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 re-
garded thirty years before as a madman's dream.
The great extent of the acceleration in the northern
mails eventually obtained may be exemplified as
follows. When I first took the matter in hand, though
there was railway conveyance over the whole distance,
' * "July 26th, 1853. Called at Euston Square and saw Huish and Bruyeres on
the subject of a swift mail to the North. My notion is to run a train with only
one or two carriages in addition to those required for the mail, and to stop only
once in about forty miles."
"July 28th. Called again at Euston Square, and . . . proposed forty miles
an hour, including stoppages, thus reaching Edinburgh by 7 a.m." Sir R. Hill's
Journal.
ED.