The Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the

236 LIFE OF SIR ROWLAND HILL. [1851-4
engineer), we should be bound to pay a certain fixed
multiple of that amount. Captain Galton, of the
Board of Trade, and Sir William Cubitt the eminent
engineer, entirely approved of both these plans, the
latter estimating the cost in question at from one
shilling to one shilling and threepence per mile, and
advising that we should offer to pay two-and-a-half
times that amount. Under this rule, it may be observed,
the Post Office would have to pay less for
the whole train than it now frequently pays for only
a small part of one.
The proposal of mutual fines for unpunctuality, not-
withstanding its sweetener of rewards for punctuality,
found but little favour with the companies, and the
same remark applies to the plan of charge by fixed
scale ; but the proposed special mail service was ulti-
mately adopted.
The introduction of the apparatus for exchanging
bags without the stoppage of the train naturally
excited considerable attention. Probably, however,
many of my readers know little of the process beyond
its result. That which takes place is as follows :
The bags to be forwarded, being suspended from a
projecting arm at the station, are so knocked off by
a projection from the train as to fall into a net which
is attached to the mail carriage, and is for the moment
stretched out to receive them, while, at the same time,
the bags to be left behind, being hung out from the
mail carriage, are in like manner so struck off as to be
caught in a net fixed at the station ; the whole of this
complex movement being
uninformed eye cannot follow it.
so instantaneous that the
"
April Qth) 1853. The mail inspector reports that the people on
the line of the [recently]
accelerated mail assemble in crowds to see
the bags exchanged at those stations at which the train does not stop.