For many years my father's attention had been turned towards the question of postal reform; although in that respect he was far from standing alone. The defects of the old system were so obvious that with many people they formed a common subject of conversation; and plans of improvement were repeatedly discussed. So far back as 1826 Rowland Hill's thoughts had outgrown the first stage on the road to “betterment”—that of mere fault-finding with the things that are. He had drawn up a scheme for a travelling post office. The fact that, whereas the mails from all parts as a rule reached London at 6 A.M., while the distribution of letters only began three hours later, struck him as a defect in need of urgent remedy. If, he argued, the inside of the mail-coach, or “an additional body thereto, were to be fitted with shelves and other appliances, the guard might sort and [date] stamp the letters, etc., on the journey. By so doing, time would be saved: the mails would either leave the provincial towns three hours later, giving more time for correspondence, or the letters could be delivered in London three hours earlier.” In January 1830 he suggested the dispatch of mail matter by means of pneumatic tubes. But neither project went beyond the stage of written memoranda; nor, in face of the never-failing hostility manifested by the post officials towards all reforms, especially those emanating from outsiders, was likely to do more. Early in the 'thirties reductions in certain departments of taxation had been made; and my father's mind being still turned towards the Post Office, he fell into the habit of discussing with his family and others the advisability of extending similar reductions to postal rates. And this seems a fitting place to mention that while from every member of his family he received the heartiest sympathy and help throughout the long struggle to introduce his reform, it was his eldest brother, Matthew, who, more than any other, did him yeoman service; and, after Matthew, the second brother, Edwin.[66] Of the five Hill brothers who reached old age, it has been claimed for the eldest that, intellectually, he was the greatest. He had not, perhaps, the special ability which enabled my father to plan the postal reform, a measure which probably none of his brothers, gifted as in various ways all were, could have thought out, and brought to concrete form; neither had the eldest the mathematical power which distinguished Rowland. But in all other respects Matthew stood first; and that he was one of the wittiest, wisest, most cultivated, and, at the same time, most tender-hearted of men in an age especially rich in the type there can be no doubt. He was the first Birmingham man to go to the Bar, and for twenty-eight years was his native city's first recorder.