out—to have this scheme understood as having been the unaided conception of his own mind—was with Sir Rowland Hill simply a mania, and to that mania James Chalmers, the originator in every sense of that adhesive stamp, was sacrificed.

The bearing of all this non-originality of conception on the part of Sir Rowland Hill is obvious when the question of the stamp is under consideration. In propounding the scheme itself, what were only acquired ideas were assumed, or allowed to be assumed, as inventions or conceptions. As with the scheme, so with the stamp—the stamp also was an acquired idea, not Rowland Hill's invention.

Having now, however, obtained from a quarter of the highest standing, after an impartial investigation, a full acknowledgment of my father's services, and this in addition to an already large amount of recognition from the press in general, further observations as to the non-originality of the scheme may be here dispensed with, for the present at least, and left to history. And if I have been compelled to show that, so far from the adhesive stamp having been the invention of Sir Rowland Hill, originality of conception formed no element whatever in any one of the proposals of even the Penny Postage Scheme itself, such course has been forced upon me by the unfortunate proceedings of Mr. Pearson Hill in denying, against the clearest evidence, my just claim in the matter of the stamp, without a pretence of proof that such was at any period an invention on the part of Sir Rowland Hill.

THE IMPRESSED STAMP.

The plan by which Mr. Rowland Hill, in his pamphlet of 1837, proposed to carry out in practice his uniform penny postage scheme was, shortly stated, first, simply to pay the penny or money with the letters; but secondly, and more especially, by stamped sheets of letter paper, and stamped wrappers or covers. "Let stamped covers and sheets of paper be supplied to the public, from the Stamp Office or Post Office, or both, and at such a price as to include the postage." ... "Economy and the public convenience would require that sheets of letter paper of every description should be stamped on the part used for the address; that wrappers, such as are used for newspapers, as well as covers made of cheap paper, should also be stamped," and kept on sale at the post offices. "Stationers would also be induced to keep them."

What Mr. Hill overlooked in this proposal, was the broad fact that he sets up the Stamp Office or Post Office to do the business in letter paper of the stationers throughout the kingdom—some huge Government establishment against which competition would be hopeless, as the Stamp Office was to sell the writing paper at cost price, while the stationer requires a profit to pay his rent and expenses, and to live upon. The effect upon the stationers, consequently would have been confiscation—and against this plan the united body of paper makers and stationers subsequently protested.

The Select Committee of the House of Commons of 1837-38, again, took exception to Mr. Hill's plan mainly on account of its liability to forgery—a stamp of the nature proposed would be extensively forged. After evidence on the part of the Stamp-Office authorities and paper makers had been taken, it was decided to recommend—that the paper for all stamped covers should be manufactured at the paper mills of a Mr. Dickenson, or of another, solely, under strict excise supervision. This paper of Mr. Dickenson's was of a peculiar make, having threads of cotton or silk so interwoven in the paper that a post-office clerk could readily know by the look or feel that a stamped cover was genuine. The paper makers protested and petitioned against this, objecting to one of the body having all the work. Besides, the proposal involved permanent excise supervision over the manufacture of paper. This proposal, however, extended only to covers or envelopes; how forgery was to be prevented in respect to the stamps upon the sheets of letter paper the Committee do not say. The whole position, in fact, remained in a state of chaos, only relieved by the ultimate adoption of the adhesive stamp, which plan Mr. Chalmers had laid before this Committee through Mr. Wallace, the Chairman, and likewise through Mr. Chalmers, M.P., a member of the Committee, and which plan had been publicly discussed, not without finding adherents, including Mr. Cobden, one of the witnesses in favour of the scheme.

To the solution proposed by the Committee that all stamped covers should be made of Dickenson's peculiar paper the Government again highly objected, further adding to the dilemma; and when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the 5th of July, 1839, introduced and carried a resolution sanctioning a Penny Postage Bill being brought forward, he distinctly only "asked hon. members to commit themselves to the question of a uniform rate of postage of one penny at and under a weight hereafter to be fixed." Everything else was to be left open. "If it were to go forth to the public to-morrow morning that the Government had proposed, and the House had adopted, the plan of Mr. Rowland Hill, the necessary result would be to spread a conviction abroad that, as a stamped cover was absolutely to be used in all cases, which stamped covers were to be made by one single manufacturer, alarm would be felt lest a monopoly would thereby be created, to the serious detriment of other members of a most useful and important trade. The sense of injustice excited by this would necessarily be extreme. I therefore do not call upon the House either to affirm or to negative any such proposition at the present. I ask you simply to affirm the adoption of a uniform penny postage, and the taxation of that postage by weight. Neither do I ask you to pledge yourselves to the prepayment of letters, for I am of opinion that, at all events, there should be an option of putting letters into the post without a stamp."

"If the resolution be affirmed, and the Bill has to be proposed, it will hereafter require very great care and complicated arrangements to carry the plan into practical effect. It may involve considerable expense and considerable responsibility on the part of the Government; it may disturb existing trades, such as the paper trade." ... "The new postage will be distinctly and simply a penny postage by weight." ... "I also require for the Treasury a power of taking the postage by anticipation, and a power of allowing such postage to be taken by means of stamped covers, and I also require the authority of rating the postage according to weight."[1]

In this dilemma, as to how to carry out the scheme in practice, Mr. Wallace favourably suggested the adhesive stamp, the adoption of which plan, he had no hesitation in saying from the evidence adduced, would secure the revenue from loss by forgery. Mr. Warburton, also a member of the 1837-38 Committee, "viewing with considerable alarm the doubt which had been expressed of adopting Mr. Hill's plan of prepayment and collection by stamped covers," recommended that plans should be applied for from the public.

Again, in the House of Lords on the 5th of August, Lord Melbourne, in introducing the Bill, is as much embarrassed as was the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Commons. The opponents of the Bill use, as one of their strongest arguments, the impossibility of carrying out the scheme in practice. The Earl of Ripon says:—"Why were their lordships thus called upon at this