THE STAMPS
Between the date of Rowland Hill's leaving the Treasury, and that
of his appointment to the Post Office to take up afresh the work to
which, more than aught else, he was devoted, an interval of about
four years elapsed, during a great part of which, as has just been
mentioned, he found congenial employment on the directorate of the
London and Brighton railway; a little later becoming also a member
of the Board of Directors of two minor lines of railway. But as this
episode is outside the scope of the present work, the four-years-long
gap may be conveniently bridged over by the writing of a chapter on
postage stamps.
Since their collection became a fashion—or, as it is sometimes
unkindly called, a craze—much has been written concerning them, of
which a great part is interesting, and, as a rule, veracious; while
the rest, even when interesting, has not infrequently been decidedly
the reverse of true. This latter fact is especially regrettable when
the untruths occur in works of reference, a class of books professedly
compiled with every care to guard against intrusion of error. Neglect
of this precaution, whether the result of carelessness or ignorance,
or from quite dissimilar reasons, is to be deplored. No hungry person
cares to be offered a stone when he has asked for bread; nor is it
gratifying to the student, who turns with a heart full of faith to a
should-be infallible guide into the ways of truth, to find that he has
strayed into the realm of fiction.
The present chapter on stamps merely touches the fringe of the
subject, in no wise resembles a philatelist catalogue, and may
therefore be found to lack interest. But at least every endeavour
shall be made to avoid excursion into fableland.
Since the story of the postal labels should be told from the
beginning, it will be well to comment here on some of the more glaring
of the misstatements regarding that beginning contained in the
notice on postage stamps which forms part of the carelessly-written
article on the Post Office which appeared in the ninth edition of the
“Encyclopædia Britannica,” vol. xix. p. 585.
(1) “A postpaid envelope,” the writer declares, “was in common use in
Paris in the year 1653.”
So far from being “in common use,” the envelope or cover was the
outcome of an aristocratic monopoly granted, as we have seen in a
previous chapter, to M. de Valayer, who, “under royal approbation” set
up “'a private' [penny?][151] post, placing boxes at the corners of the
streets for the reception of letters wrapped up in envelopes which
were to be bought at offices established for that purpose.”[1] To
M. de Valayer, therefore, would seem to belong priority of invention
of the street letter-box, and perhaps of the impressed stamp and
envelope; although evidence to prove that the boon was intended for
public use seems to be wanting. In the days of Louis XIV. how many
of the “common”alty were able to make use of the post? M. de Valayer
also devised printed forms of “billets,” prepaid, and a facsimile of
one is given in the _Quarterly Review's_ article.[152] Like our own
present-day postcards, one side of the billet was to be used for the
address, the other for correspondence; but the billet was a sheet of
paper longer than our postcard, and no doubt it was folded up—the
address, of course, showing—before being posted. There is no trace on
the facsimile of an adhesive stamp. Neither is mention made of any
invention or use of such stamp in France or elsewhere in the year
1670, although some seeker after philatelist mare's-nests a while
since read into the article aforesaid fiction of that sort.
(2) “Stamped postal letter paper (_carta postale bollata_) was issued
to the public by the Government of the Sardinian States in November
1818; and stamped postal envelopes were issued by the same Government
from 1820 till 1836.”
There was no such issue “to the public.” For the purpose of collecting
postal duties, “stamped paper or covers of several values, both
with embossed and with impressed stamps, appear to have been used in
the kingdom of Sardinia about the year 1819.”[153] The use of these
stamped covers, etc., was almost entirely limited to one small class
of the community, namely the Ministers of State, and was in force
from about 1819 to 1821 only. “In March 1836, a formal decree was
passed suppressing their further use, the decree being required simply
to demonetise a large stock found unused in the Stamp Office at
Turin.”[1] The Sardinian experiment, like the earlier one of M. de
Valayer in Paris, had but a brief existence, the cause of failure in
both cases being apparently attributable to the absence of uniformity
of rate.
(3) “Stamped wrappers for newspapers were made experimentally in
London by Mr Charles Whiting, under the name of 'go-frees,' in 1830.”
In this country Charles Knight—in as complete ignorance as was
my father of M. de Valayer's experiment in the mid-seventeenth
century—has always been considered the first to propose the use of
stamped covers or wrappers for newspapers; and this he did in 1834,
his covers being intended to take the place, as payers of postage,
of the duty stamp, when that odious “tax on knowledge” should be
abolished. Had it been possible under the old postal system to prepay
letter-postage as well as newspaper-postage, what more likely than
that a man so far-seeing as was Mr Knight would also have suggested
the application of his stamp to all mail matter? _Letter_ postage
stamps and prepayment had, of necessity, to await the advent of 1840
and uniformity of rate.[154]
(4) “Finally, and in its results most important of all, the adhesive
stamp was made experimentally by Mr James Chalmers in his printing
office at Dundee, in 1834.”
An untruth followed by other untruths equally astounding.
Mr Chalmers, when writing of his stamps, has happily supplied
refutation of the fraudulent claim set up for him since his own death
and that of the postal reformer; and as Mr Chalmers is the person
chiefly concerned in that claim, and was a man as honourable as he
was public-spirited, his evidence must necessarily be more valuable
than that of any other witness. He published his suggestions as to
postal reform, etc., in full, with his name and address added, in
the _Post Circular_[155] of 5th April 1838, his paper being dated
8th February of the same year. Specimens of his stamps accompanied
his communication; and in a reprint of this paper made in 1839 he
claimed November 1837 as the date of his “_first_” experiments in
stamp-making—the italics being his own. In none of his writings is
there mention of any earlier experiments; neither is allusion made
to any such in the numerously-signed “certificate” addressed by his
fellow-citizens of Dundee to the Treasury in September 1839. The
certificate eulogises Mr Chalmers' valuable public services, speaks of
his successful efforts in 1825 to establish a 48 hours' acceleration
of the mail-coaches plying between Dundee and London, and recommends
to “My Lords” the adoption of the accompanying “slips” proposed by
him. But nowhere in the certificate is reference made to the mythical
stamps declared, nearly half a century later, to have been made in
1834. Yet some of these over one hundred signatories must have been
among the friends who, according to the fable, visited Mr Chalmers'
printing office in that year to inspect those early stamps. An
extraordinary instance of wholesale forgetfulness if the stamps had
had actual existence.[156] The “slips” made “_first_” in November 1837
were narrow pieces of paper of which one end bore the printed stamp,
while the other end was to be slipped under the envelope flap—a clumsy
device, entailing probable divorce between envelope and “slip” during
their passage through the post. The fatal objection to all his stamps
was that they were type-set, thereby making forgery easy. In every
case the stamps bear the face-value proposed by Rowland Hill in his
plan of reform—a penny the half, and twopence the whole ounce. Not
only did Mr Chalmers _not_ invent the stamp, adhesive or otherwise,
but of the former he disapproved on the ground of the then supposed
difficulty of gumming large sheets of paper.[157]
It may be added that copies of the _Post Circular_ figure in the “Cole
Bequest” to the South Kensington Museum; and if a very necessary
caution addressed to the custodians there while the Chalmers claim was
being rather hotly urged has received due attention, those documents
should still be in the Museum, unimpeachable witnesses to the truth.
This claim to priority of invention, or of _publication_ of invention,
of the stamps which, with culpable carelessness, obtained recognition
in the pages of the “Encyclopædia Britannica” has no foundation in
fact. The writer of the article on the Post Office in “Chambers's
Encyclopædia,” ix. 677 (edition 1901), is far better informed on the
subject of which he treats, though even he says that “Both” [men]
“seem to have hit on the plan independently; but,” he adds, with true
discernment of the weakest feature of the claim, “the use of adhesive
postage stamps, without uniform rates, and at a time when the practice
of sending letters unpaid was almost universal, would obviously have
been impossible.”
This impossibility has already been demonstrated in the present
work in the chapter on “The Old System.” The simple explanation
of the cause which prompted Mr Chalmers, late in 1837, to make
designs for the stamps is not far to seek. At some time during the
intervening months he had read “Post Office Reform,”[158] opened up a
correspondence with its author—till then an entire stranger—and joined
the ranks of those who were helping on the reform. It is a pity that
in the attempt to fix upon this public-spirited man credit for an
invention which was not his, the good work he actually accomplished
should be frequently lost sight of.
The “Dictionary of National Biography” also too readily gave
countenance to the Chalmers fable, a decision perhaps explained by the
priority of position accorded in the alphabet to C over H. An accident
of this sort gives a misstatement that proverbial long start which is
required for its establishment, and naturally handicaps truth in the
race; the consequence being that rectification of error is not made,
and the later article is altered to bring it into seeming agreement
with the earlier.[159]
On the other hand, the conductors of “Chambers's Encyclopædia”
evidently recognise that a work of reference should be a mine of
reliable information, one of their most notable corrections in a
later edition of a mistake made in one earlier being that attributing
the suppression of garrotting to the infliction on the criminals of
corporal punishment—an allegation which, however, often asserted by
those outside the legal profession, has more than once been denied by
some of the ablest men within it.
No notice would have been taken in these pages of this preposterous
claim were it not that the two works of reference whose editors or
conductors seem to have been only too easily imposed upon have a
wide circulation, and that until retraction be made—an invitation
to accord which, in at least one case, was refused for apparently
a quite frivolous reason—the foolish myth will in all probability
be kept alive. The fraud was so clumsily constructed that it was
scarcely taken seriously by those who know anything of the real
history of the stamps, impressed and adhesive; and surprise might be
felt that sane persons should have put even a passing faith in it,
but for recollection that—to say nothing of less notorious cases—the
once famous Tichborne claimant never lacked believers in his equally
egregious and clumsily constructed imposture.
How little the Chalmers claimant believed in his own story is shown
by his repeated refusal to accept any of the invitations my brother
gave him to carry the case into Court. Had the claim been genuine,
its truth might then and there have been established beyond hope of
refutation.
In all probability most of the claimants to invention of the postage
stamp—they have, to our knowledge, numbered over a dozen, while the
claimants to the entire plan of reform make up at least half that
tale—came from the many competitors who, in response to the Treasury's
invitation to the public to furnish designs, sent in drawings and
written suggestions.[160] What more natural than that, as years went
past and old age and weakened memory came on, these persons should
gradually persuade themselves and others that not only had they
invented the _designs_ they sent up for competition, but also the very
_idea_ of employing stamps with which to pay postage? Even in such a
strange world as this, it is not likely that _all_ the claimants were
wilful impostors.[161]
Rowland Hill's first proposal in regard to the postage stamps was
that they and the envelopes should be of one piece, the stamps being
printed on the envelopes. But some days later the convenience of
making the stamp separate, and therefore adhesive, occurred to him;
and he at once proposed its use, describing it, as we have seen, as
“a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at
the back with glutinous wash,” etc. As both stamps are recommended in
“Post Office Reform” as well as in its author's examination before the
Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry in February 1837, it is clear
that priority of _suggestion_ as well as of _publication_ belong to
Rowland Hill.[162]
By 1838 official opinion, though still adverse to the proposal to tax
letters by weight, had come to view with favour the idea of prepayment
by means of stamps. Still, one of the chief opponents enumerated as
many as nine classes of letters to which he thought that stamps would
be inapplicable. The task of replying to eight of these objections
was easy enough; with the ninth Rowland Hill was fain to confess his
inability to deal. Stamps, it was declared, would be unsuitable to
“half-ounce letters weighing an ounce or more.”[163]
That the stamps—whatever should be the design chosen—would run risk
of forgery was a danger which caused no little apprehension; and the
Chairman of the Board of Stamps and Taxes (Inland Revenue) proposed
to minimise that risk by having them printed on paper especially
prepared. In the case of the envelopes bearing the embossed head, the
once famous “Dickinson” paper, which contained fine threads of silk
stretched across the pulp while at its softest, was that chosen. It
was believed to be proof against forgery, and was in vogue for several
years, but has long fallen into disuse.
The Government, as we have seen, decided in July 1839 to adopt the
plan of uniform penny postage, including the employment of “stamped
covers, stamped paper, and stamps to be used separately,”[164] and
invited the public to furnish designs for these novel objects. In
answer to the appeal came in some 2,600 letters containing suggestions
and many sets of drawings, of which forty-nine varieties alone were
for the adhesive stamps. It was, if possible, an even less artistic
age than the present—though, at least, it adorned the walls of its
rooms with something better than tawdry _bric-à-brac_, unlovely
Japanese fans, and the contents of the china-closet—and in most cases
beauty of design was conspicuous by its absence, a fault which,
coupled with others more serious, especially that of entire lack of
security against forgery, fore-doomed the greater number of the essays
to rejection.[165]
To become a financial success it was necessary that the stamps should
be produced cheaply, yet of workmanship so excellent that imitation
could be easily detected. Now there is one art which we unconsciously
practise from infancy to old age—that of tracing differences in
the human faces we meet with. It is this art or instinct which
enables us to distinguish our friends from strangers; and it was,
perhaps, recognition of this fact that long ago led to the placing
on the coinage of the portrait of the reigning monarch because it
was familiar to the public eye, and therefore less likely than any
other face to be counterfeited. In an engraving of some well-known
countenance, any thickening or misplacing of the facial lines makes
so great an alteration in features and expression that forgery is
far more easily detected than when the device is only a coat-of-arms
or other fanciful ornament.[166] For this reason, therefore, it was
decided in 1839 to reproduce on the postage stamp the youthful Queen's
head in profile designed by Wyon for the money of the then new reign,
daily use of which coinage was making her face familiar to all her
people. The head is also identical with that on the medal—likewise by
Wyon—which was struck to commemorate her first State visit to the city
in November 1837.
The stamp then being difficult to counterfeit, and worth but little
in itself, while the machinery employed to produce it was costly,
the reason is obvious why, so far as is known, only two attempts,
and those so clumsy that one wonders who could have wasted time in
forging the things, were made to imitate the finely executed, earliest
“Queen's head.”[167]
The design was engraved by hand on a single steel matrix, the head,
through the agency of this costly machinery, being encompassed by
many fine, delicately-wrought lines. The matrix was then hardened,
and used to produce impressions on a soft steel roller of sufficient
circumference to receive twelve repetitions, the beautiful work of
the original matrix being therefore repeated, line for line, in every
stamp printed. The roller, being in turn hardened, reproduced, under
very heavy pressure, its counterpart on a steel plate a score of
times, thus making up the requisite 240 impressions which cause each
sheet to be of the value of one sovereign.[168]
Absolute uniformity was thus secured at comparatively little cost.
The ingenious process was invented by Mr Perkins,[169] of the firm
of Perkins, Bacon & Co. of Fleet Street, who, during the first forty
years of the reformed postal system, printed some 95/100ths of our
postage stamps, and in that space of time issued nearly 21,000,000,000
of penny adhesives alone.[170] Later, the contract passed into
the hands of Messrs De La Rue, who hitherto, but long after 1840,
had merely printed stamps of a few higher values than the penny
and twopenny issue. In at least one work of fiction, however, the
impression is conveyed that the latter firm from the first enjoyed the
monopoly of stamp production of all values.
About midway in the 'fifties a serious fire broke out on Messrs
Perkins & Co.'s premises, and much valuable material was destroyed.
Investigation of the salvage showed that barely two days' supply
of stamps remained in stock; and some anxiety was felt lest these
should become exhausted before fresh ones could be produced, as even
a temporary return to prepayment by coin of the realm would by this
time have been found irksome. But with characteristic zeal, the firm
at once recommenced work, and only a few people were ever aware how
perilously near to deadlock the modern postal machine had come. It was
after this fire that the crimson hue of the penny adhesive was altered
to a sort of brick-red. The change of colour—one of several such
changes exhibited by the red stamp—is duly recorded in Messrs Stanley
Gibbon & Co.'s catalogue, though the probably long-forgotten accident
with which it would seem to be connected is not mentioned.
The reasons for the four months' long delay in the issue of the stamps
were twofold. They were, first, the more or less open hostility of
the Post officials to both reform and reformer, which, as has been
stated, caused all sorts of hindrances to be strewn in the path of
progress; and, secondly, the apprehension still felt by the Government
that the public would not take kindly to prepayment. The stamps
ought, of course, to have been issued in time to be used by the 10th
January 1840, when the new system came into force. When they were at
last forthcoming, none were forwarded to the receiving offices till
complaint was made. The fault was then found to lie with the wording
of the Treasury letter giving the requisite directions. Later, another
difficulty arose. The Stamp Office persisted in issuing the stamped
covers in entire sheets as they were printed, and the Post Office
refused to supply them uncut to the receivers. Three days alone were
wasted over this wrangle. A week later the Post Office, which had
formally undertaken the distribution of the covers, discovered that
such work was beyond its powers. For a month after the first issue of
the stamps the receiving offices remained unsupplied.
While the Government and others still cherished the delusion that the
recipient of a letter would feel insulted if denied the time-honoured
privilege of paying for it, the delayed publication of the stamps was
less to be regretted since it enabled the experiment to be first tried
with money only.
The official forecast was at fault. From the very start, and with
the best will in the world, the public, when posting letters, put
down pennies and missives together, and when the stamps—called by
would-be wits the “Government sticking-plasters”—at last appeared, the
difficulty was not to persuade people to make use of them, but to get
them supplied fast enough to meet the popular demand.
While the stamps were still new that large section of mankind which
never reads public instructions was occasionally at a loss where to
affix the adhesive. Any corner of the envelope but the right one would
be chosen, or, not infrequently, the place at the back partly occupied
by the old-fashioned seal or wafer. Even the most painstaking of
people were sometimes puzzled, and a certain artist, accustomed, like
all his brethren of the brush, to consider that portion of his canvas
the right hand which faced his left, was so perplexed that he carried
to the nearest post office his letter and stamp, knocked up the clerk,
and when the latter's face appeared at the little unglazed window of
the ugly wooden screen which is now superseded everywhere, perhaps
save at railway booking offices, by the more civilised open network,
asked politely, “Which do you call the right hand of a letter?” “
We've no time here for stupid jokes,” was the surly answer, and the
window shut again directly.
A similar rebuff was administered to a man who, while travelling,
called for letters at the post office of a provincial town. He was
the unfortunate possessor of an “impossible” patronymic. “What name?”
demanded the supercilious clerk. “Snooks,” replied the applicant;
and down went the window panel with a bang, accompanied by a forcibly
expressed injunction not to bother a busy man with idiotic jests.
To the post office of, at that time, tiny Ambleside, came one day a
well-to-do man to buy a stamp to put on the letter he was about to
post. “Is this new reform going to last?” he asked the postmaster.
“Certainly,” was the reply; “it is quite established.” “Oh, well,
then,” said the man, resolved to give the thing generous support,
“give me _three_ stamps!” Not much of a story to tell, perhaps, but
significant of the small amount of letter-writing which in pre-penny
postage days went on even among those well-to-do people who were not
lucky enough to enjoy the franking privilege.
The postal employees also showed their strangeness to the new order of
things by frequently forgetting to cancel the stamps when the letters
bearing them passed through the post—thereby enabling dishonest people
to defraud the Department by causing the unobliterated labels to
perform another journey. Many correspondents, known and unknown, sent
Rowland Hill, in proof of this carelessness, envelopes which bore such
stamps. Once a packet bearing four uncancelled stamps reached him.
The Mulready envelope had met with the cordial approbation of the
artist's fellow Royal Academicians when it was exhibited in Council
previous to its official acceptance; though one defect, palpable to
any one of fairly discerning ability, had apparently escaped the
eighty possibly somnolent eyes belonging to “the Forty”—that
among the four winged messengers whom Britannia is sending forth in
different directions seven legs only are apportioned. The envelope
failed to please the public; it was mercilessly satirised and
caricatured, and ridicule eventually drove it out of use. So vast a
number of “Mulreadies” remained in stock, however, that, on their
withdrawal, a machine had to be constructed to destroy them. There
were no philatelists then to come to their rescue.
[Illustration: THE MULREADY ENVELOPE.]
Forgery of the stamps being out of the question, fraudulent people
devoted their energies to getting rid of the red ink used to
obliterate the black “pennies” in order to affix these afresh to
letters as new stamps. The frauds began soon after the first issue of
the adhesives, for by the 21st of May my father was already writing
in his diary of the many ingenious tricks which were practised.
Cheating the Post Office had so long been an established rule, that
even when postage became cheap, and the public shared its benefits
impartially—peer and Parliamentarian now being favoured no more highly
than any other class—the evil habit did not at once die out.
In some cases the fraud was palpable and unabashed. For example, Lord
John Russell one day received a sheet of paper, the label on which
had been washed so mercilessly that the Queen's features were barely
discernible. The difficulty of dealing with the trouble was, of
course, intensified by the fact that whereas the stamps were impressed
on the paper by powerful machinery, and had had time to dry, the
obliterations were made by hand,[171] and were fresh—a circumstance
which, in view of the tenacity of thoroughly dried ink, gave a great
advantage to the dishonest.
At this juncture an ink invented by a Mr Parsons was favourably
reported on as an obliterant, but it shortly yielded to the skill
of Messrs Perkins & Co.; and the stamp-cleaning frauds continuing,
several of our leading scientific men, including Faraday, were
consulted. As a result, new obliterating inks, red and black, were
successively produced, tested, and adopted, but only for a while. Some
of the experiment-makers lived as far off as Dublin and Aberdeen;
and Dr Clark, Professor of Chemistry at the University of the latter
city, came forward on his own account, and showed his interest in the
cause by making or suggesting a number of experiments. Many people,
indeed, went to work voluntarily, for the interest taken in the matter
was widespread, and letters offering suggestions poured in from many
quarters. But apparently the chemically skilled among the rogues were
abler than those employed by the officials, since the “infallible”
recipes had an unlucky knack of turning out dismal failures.
Therefore, after consultation with Faraday, it was resolved that, so
soon as the stock of stamps on hand became exhausted, an aqueous ink
should be used both for the stamps and for the obliteration, ordinary
black printing ink being meanwhile employed for the latter process.
Professor Phillips and Mr Bacon, of the firm of Perkins & Co., at the
same time undertook to procure a destructive oleaginous ink to be used
in the printing of the new stamp.
It was hoped that thoroughly good printer's ink would be found
efficacious for obliterating purposes; but ere long a chemist named
Watson completely removed the obliteration. He then proposed for use
an obliterative ink of his own invention, which was tried, but proved
to be inconveniently successful, since it both injured the paper
and effaced the writing near the stamp. Its use had therefore to be
abandoned.
The trouble did not slacken, for while Mr Watson was laboriously
removing the black printing ink from the black pennies, and making
progress so slowly that, at a like rate, the work could not have
repaid any one, honest or the reverse, for the time spent upon it,
Mr Ledingham, my father's clerk, who had throughout shown great
enthusiasm in the cause, was cleaning stamps nine times as fast, or
at the rate of one a minute—a process rapid enough to make the trick
remunerative.
Ultimately, it occurred to Rowland Hill that “as the means which were
successful in removing the printing ink obliterant were different from
those which discharged Perkins' ink, a secure ink might perhaps be
obtained by simply mixing the two.”[172] The device succeeded, the
ink thus formed proving indestructible; and all seemed likely to go
well, when a fresh and very disagreeable difficulty made its unwelcome
appearance. To enable this ink to dry with sufficient rapidity, a
little volatile oil had been introduced, and its odour was speedily
pronounced by the postal officials to be intolerable. Happily, means
were found for removing the offence; and at length, a little before
the close of the year, all requirements seemed to be met.[173]
It had been a time of almost incessant anxiety. For more than six
months there had been the earlier trouble of securing a suitable
design for the stamps, and then, when selected, the long delay in
effecting their issue; and now, during another six months, this later
trouble had perplexed the officials and their many sympathisers.
In the end, the colour of the black penny was changed to red, the
twopenny stamp remaining blue. Thenceforth, oleaginous inks were
used both for printing and for obliterating; the ink for the latter
purpose being made so much more tenacious than that used to print
the stamp that any attempt to remove the one from the other, even
if the destruction of both did not follow, must at least secure the
disappearance of the Queers head. A simple enough remedy for the evil,
and, like many another simple remedy, efficacious; yet some of the
cleverest men in the United Kingdom took half a year to find it out.
Before trial it was impossible to tell which of the two kinds of
stamps would be preferred: the one impressed upon the envelope and so
forming a part of it, or the other, the handy little adhesive. Rowland
Hill expected the former to be the favourite on account of its being
already in place, and therefore less time-consuming. Moreover, as a
man gifted with a delicate sense of touch, the tiny label which, when
wet, is apt to adhere unpleasantly to the fingers, attracted him less
than the cleanlier embossed stamp on the envelope; and perhaps he
thought it not unlikely that other people would be of like mind. But
from the first the public showed a preference for the adhesive; and
to this day the more convenient cover with the embossed head has been
far seldomer in demand. It is not impossible that if the present life
of feverish hurry and high pressure continues, and even intensifies,
the reformer's expectations as regards the choice of stamps may yet
be realised. It may have been the expression of this merely “pious
opinion” on his part which gave rise to some absurd fables—as, for
instance, that he recommended the adhesive stamp “very hesitatingly,”
and only at the eleventh hour; that he sought to restrict the public
to the use of the impressed stamp because he preferred it himself; and
rubbish of like sort.
From the time that Rowland Hill first planned his reform till the day
when his connection with the Post Office terminated, his aim ever was
to make of that great Department a useful servant to the public; and
all who knew what was his career there were well aware that when at
length he had beaten down opposition, that object was attained. He
was the last man likely to allow personal predilections or selfish or
unworthy considerations of any kind to stand before the welfare of the
service and of his country.
[Illustration:
_From a Photograph by Maull and Polyblank._
SIR ROWLAND HILL.]
FOOTNOTES:
[151] “Life,” i. 377. It is curious that neither in the article on
the French Post Office in the “Encyclopædia Brittanica” nor in that
in Larousse's “_Dictionnaire du XIXe Siècle_” is mention made of M.
de Valayer or M. Piron. Whether the real worthies are excluded from
the articles in order to make room for the fustian bound to creep in,
it would be difficult to say. But, while perusing these writings,
a saying of my brother's often returns to mind. “I have never,” he
declared, “read any article upon the postal reform, friendly or the
reverse, which was free from misstatements.”
[152] No. 128, p. 555.
[153] “The Origin of Postage Stamps,” p. 7. By Pearson Hill. Here is a
story of a “find” that is more interesting than that at Turin or that
of M. Piron already alluded to, because it comes nearer home to us.
About the middle of the nineteenth century, and during the demolition
in London of some old houses which had long been appropriated to
governmental use, and were now abandoned, the discovery was made of
a large number of the paper-duty stamps, issued by George III.'s
Ministry in order to tax the “American Colonies.” When the obnoxious
impost was cancelled, and the many years long revolt had become a
successful revolution, the ex-colonies thenceforth assuming the
title of “The United States,” the stamps became waste material, and
were thrown into a cupboard, and forgotten. At the time of their
reappearance, the then Chairman of the Board of Stamps and Taxes
(Inland Revenue Office), Mr John Wood, gave half a dozen of them to
Rowland Hill, as curiosities; and one is still in my possession.
Another was given by my father to the American philanthropist, Mr
Peabody, then visiting this country, who was greatly interested in
the discovery. Now it would be just as correct to say that the tax
had been imposed on the American Colonies—of course it never _was_
imposed, since, as we know, payment was from the first refused—till
the middle of the nineteenth century, simply because the stamps were
only found some eighty years after their supersession, as it is to
say that the Sardinian “stamped postal letter paper” and “stamped
postal envelopes” were employed till 1836, in which year, after long
disuse, they were formally abolished. But the manner and matter of the
“Encyclopædia Britannica's” article on the Post Office and the stamps
are not what they should be, and much of them would reflect discredit
on the average school-boy.
[154] Prepayment, as has been stated, was not actually unknown, but
was so rare as to be practically non-existent.
[155] The _Post Circular_ was a paper set up temporarily by the
“Mercantile Committee” to advocate the reform. It was ably edited by
Mr Cole, and had a wide circulation.
[156] The stamps were probably exhibited at the Dundee printing
office, any time between November 1837 and September 1839—at which
later date they were sent to London.
[157] Published in February of that year.
[158] Published in February of that year.
[159] Dr Birkbeck Hill, on one occasion, told me that in the article
on my father which he was asked to write for the D.N.B. he said of
the adhesive stamp that its invention had been “wrongfully attributed
to Mr James Chalmers”—words which nowhere appear in the article as
it now stands. “The proprietors of the 'Encyclopædia Britannica,'”
wrote my brother in “The Origin of Postage Stamps,” pp. 14, 15 (note),
“did not avail themselves of the offer I had made to place them in
communication with those from whom official information could be best
obtained—indeed, they appear to have made no application to the Post
Office for information of any kind.... Meanwhile, as it afterwards
turned out, they were abundantly supplied with Mr P. Chalmers' _ex
parte_, and, to say the least, singularly inaccurate statements.
With the editor of the 'Dictionary of National Biography' I had no
communication whatever.” Is it after this careless fashion that much
of our “island story” is compiled? If so, what wonder that long before
the present day wise men should have declared that all history needed
to be rewritten?
[160] One of these claimants was a man connected with a well-known
national museum; and his pretensions were to us a never-failing source
of amusement. He was distinguished for two peculiarities: one being a
passion for slaughtering the reputations of his friends; the other,
the misappropriation to his own credit of all originality in any
reforms or inventions projected by them. So far as I am aware, only
one claimant was of my own sex; and she, at least, had the courage of
her opinions, for, instead of biding her time till the postal reformer
was no more, the poor insane creature wrote direct to him, saying she
was the originator of the entire plan, and begging him to use his
influence with the Government to obtain for her an adequate pension.
The stories connected with some of the other claims are quite as
curious as the foregoing.
[161] Inaccuracy of memory applies to other things than invention
of postage stamps. Here is a curious instance. “Sir John Kaye, in
writing his history of the Sepoy War, said he was often obliged to
reject as convincing proof even the overwhelming assertion, 'But I was
there.' 'It is hard,' he continues, 'to disbelieve a man of honour
when he tells you what he himself did; but every writer long engaged
in historical enquiry has had before him instances in which men,
even after a brief lapse of time, have confounded in their minds the
thought of doing, or the intent to do, a certain thing with the fact
of actually having done it. Indeed, in the commonest affairs of daily
life we often find the intent mistaken for the act, in retrospect.'
Kaye was writing at a period of not more than ten to twelve years
after the events which he was narrating. When you extend ten years
to twenty or twenty-four, memories grow still more impaired, and
the difficulty of ensuring accuracy becomes increasingly greater.”
(Thus “The Reformer,” A. and H. B. Bonner, vii. 36, 37.) Most of
the claims to invention of the postage stamp seem to have been made
considerably more than ten, twelve, twenty, or twenty-four years after
its introduction—some of them curiously, or, at any rate, opportunely
enough, forty years or so after; that is about the time of Rowland
Hill's death, or but little later.
[162] For the adhesive stamp, see “Post Office Reform,” p. 45, and
“Ninth Report of the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry,” p. 38.
The impressed stamp is mentioned in “Post Office Reform” at p. 42,
and also in that “Ninth Report.” The writer of the “Encyclopædia
Britannica's” article (xix. 585), while quoting Rowland Hill's
description of the adhesive stamp, adds: “It is quite a fair inference
that this alternative had been suggested from without,” but gives no
reason for hazarding so entirely baseless an assertion. The article,
indeed, bears not a few traces of what looks like personal malice; and
it is a pity that the editorial revising pen, whether from indolence
or from misunderstanding of the subject on its wielder's part, was
suffered to lie idle.
[163] These are the actual words made use of. See “Second Report of
the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry,” Question 11,111.
[164] Thus the Treasury Minute.
[165] “In the end there were selected from the whole number of
competitors four whose suggestions appeared to evince most ingenuity,”
wrote my father. “The reward that had been offered was divided
amongst them in equal shares, each receiving £100” (“Life,” i. 388).
Sir Henry Cole gives their names as follows:—“Mr Cheverton, Mr C.
Whiting, myself, and, I believe, Messrs Perkins, Bacon & Co. After the
labour,” he adds, “of reading the two thousand five” (?six) “hundred
proposals sent to the Treasury, 'My Lords' obtained from them no other
modes of applying the postage stamp than those suggested by Mr Hill
himself—stamped covers or half sheets of paper, stamped envelopes,
labels or adhesive stamps, and stamps struck on letter-paper
itself.”—(“Fifty Years of Public Life,” i. 62, 65, 66.)
[166] So profoundly did Rowland Hill feel the importance of this fact
that he invariably scouted a suggestion occasionally made in the early
days of the postal reform that his own head should appear on at least
one of the stamps. The some-time postmaster of New Brunswick, who
caused his portrait to adorn a colonial stamp now much sought after by
philatelists on account, perhaps, of its rarity, for it was speedily
abolished, seems to have been of quite a different frame of mind.
[167] This earliest stamp was a far finer and more artistic piece of
workmanship than any of its successors; and has only to be compared
with the later specimens—say, for example, with King Edward's head on
the halfpenny postcards and newspaper bands—to see how sadly we have
fallen behind some other nations and our own older methods, at any
rate in the art of engraving, or, at least, of engraving as applied to
the postage stamp.
[168] In the paper drawn up by Rowland Hill, “On the Collection of
Postage by Means of Stamps,” and issued by the Mercantile Committee
in June 1839, he had recommended that, for convenience' sake, the
stamp should be printed on sheets each containing 240, arranged in
twenty rows of twelve apiece; and they are so printed to this day. It
has been asserted that at first the sheets were printed in strips of
twelve stamps each; but there is no truth in the statement. Archer's
perforation patent, which makes separation of the adhesives easy, and
is therefore a boon to the many of us who are often in a hurry, was
not adopted before the mid-'fifties.
[169] His father, an American, was the inventor of the once famous
air-gun.
[170] Fifteen years after the issue of the first stamps, during which
time more than 3,000,000,000 had been printed, it was deemed advisable
to make a second matrix by transfer from the first. It had become
necessary to deepen the graven lines by hand, but the work was so
carefully done that the deviation in portraiture was very slight.
[171] And a hasty hand, too, for in those days of manual labour there
was a keen race among the stampers as to who, in a given time, should
make the greatest number of obliterations. The man whose record stood
habitually highest was usually called on to exhibit his prowess to
visitors who were being escorted over the Department.
[172] Rowland Hill's Journal, 9th November 1840.
[173] “Life,” i. 399-407.