By 1846 Rowland Hill was occupying a better pecuniary position than when in 1839 he went to the Treasury. He had made his mark in the railway world; and just when rumours of his retirement therefrom were gaining ground, the South Western Railway Board of Directors offered him the managership of that line. The salary proposed was unusually high, and the invitation was transparently veiled under a Desdemona-like request that he would recommend to the Board some one with qualifications “as much like your own as possible.” But he declined this and other flattering offers, resigned his three directorships, and thus relinquished a far larger income than that which the Government asked him to accept. The monetary sacrifice, however, counted for little when weighed in the balance against the prospect of working out his plan. His first interview with Lord Clanricarde was a very pleasant one; and he left his new chief's presence much impressed with his straightforward, business-like manner. On this first day at St Martin's-le-Grand's Colonel Maberly and Rowland Hill met, and went through the ceremony of shaking hands. But the old animosity still possessed considerable vitality. The hatchet was but partially interred. With Lord Clanricarde my father worked harmoniously; the diarist after one especially satisfactory interview writing that he “never met with a public man who is less afraid of a novel and decided course of action.” Early in his postal career, my father, by Lord Clanricarde's wish, went to Bristol to reorganise the Post Office there, the first of several similar missions to other towns. In nearly every case he found one condition of things prevailing: an office small, badly lighted, badly ventilated, and with defective sanitary arrangements; the delivery of letters irregular and unnecessarily late; the mail trains leaving the provincial towns at inconvenient hours; and other vexatious regulations, or lack of regulations. He found that by an annual expenditure of £125 Bristol's chief delivery of the day could be completed by nine in the morning instead of by noon. Although unable to carry out all the improvements needed, he effected a good deal, and on the termination of his visit received the thanks of the clerks and letter-carriers.[177] In 1847 a thorough revision of the money order system was entrusted to him; and, thenceforth, that office came entirely under his control. Seventeen years later, Lord Clanricarde, in the Upper House, paid his former lieutenant, then about to retire, a handsome tribute of praise, saying, among other things, that, but for Mr Hill, the business of that office could hardly have been much longer carried on. No balance had been struck, and no one knew what assets were in hand. On passing under Mr Hill's management, the system was altered: four or five entries for each order were made instead of eleven; and official defalcation or fraud, once common, was now no more heard of.[178]