THE LIBERTY OF ST. MARTIN 'S-LE-GRAND 29 



Mr. M. J. Nobbs, reputed to be one of the very last 

 of the mail-guards, writes that : 



' The mail-coach I travelled on was allowed, dm^ing the last 

 ten years of my service on it, to carry eight outside and four 

 inside passengers — twelve ; instead of three outside and four 

 inside passengers — seven ; as was the case when I first started 

 work as a mail-guard, i.e., in 1836.' 



So far as regards England and Wales. In Ireland, 

 the guard of the Dublin and Wexford mail-coach puts 

 the number of passengers carried by his mail in the 

 last days before the raihvay at twelve — four passengers 

 inside, and eight outside. 



The explanation of these varying figures, I have 

 little doubt, is that the department by degrees gave 

 up or relaxed its limitation of passengers, and so got 

 its mails carried at less cost. It certainly set the 

 example of swift coaches, and cultivated the taste 

 for travelling. But, whatever the cause, the growth 

 of activity on the road during the twenty years which 

 preceded the opening of the railways was phenomenal. 

 In 1815, the net revenue produced by the stage-coach 

 duty (including, of course, that paid by the mail- 

 coaches) — twopence per single mile run— had been 

 ^218,000 ; in 1825, just before the move from 

 Lombard Street, it was sixty-six per cent, more ; and 

 in 1835, six years after it, the revenue amounted to 

 within a fraction of half a million sterling, equal to 

 an increase of a hundred and twenty-eight per cent. 

 on the revenue of 1815. 



If William Chaplin was by far the largest coach- 



