When a man of note dies, the journalist of the day can only reproduce in
an obituary notice the accepted position of his life and works--it is no
part of that writer's duty to examine, so as fully to certify, all the
statements at hand, or to ransack old volumes dealing with the times
when such reputation was established. That is the duty and the task of
the later historian, or of some one specially interested. Such has been
my duty, my task, as respects that public benefactor, the late Sir
Rowland Hill, with the result arrived at in this and former
publications.
Upon the death of Sir Rowland Hill in August, 1879, a series of letters
with comments thereon appeared in the Dundee press, recalling the name
and services of a townsman who, in his day, had taken an active interest
in post-office improvement, and had worked in that field to some
purpose. Mr. James Chalmers, bookseller, Dundee, who died in 1853, had
been an earnest postal reformer. Through his efforts, and after a long
correspondence with the Post Office in London, he brought about such an
acceleration of the mail as to lessen the time necessary for the reply
to a letter from Dundee to London, or betwixt the chief commercial towns
of the north and south, by two days--a day each way. Subsequently he
conceived the idea of an adhesive stamp for postage purposes; and it was
this invention, made known to such post-office reformers as Mr. Hume and
Mr. Wallace--with both of whom, as with others, he was in
communication--that formed the origin of the adoption of the adhesive
stamp in the reformed Penny Postage system of 1840, the plan proposed by
Mr. Rowland Hill in 1837 having been that of the impressed stamp.
These letters in the Dundee press from old townsmen and friends of Mr.
Chalmers, personally unknown to me as I was to them (I having left
Dundee while a youth, over fifty years ago, and passed much of the
interval abroad), with the consequent attention drawn to the subject,
naturally called upon me to make an endeavour to vindicate my father's
claim to the merit of such an important feature in the success of the
Penny Postage scheme as was, and is, the adhesive stamp. These letters,
moreover, acquainted me with what I was previously unaware of--that on
the 1st January, 1846, a public testimonial had been presented in the
Town Hall of Dundee to Mr. Chalmers, in recognition of his postal
services, and of his having been the originator of the adhesive postage
stamp; thus all the more calling upon me to investigate a subject of
which hitherto I had only a dim and partial idea. This investigation was
further facilitated by my withdrawal just before the same period of 1879
from active business, thus enabling me to examine at the library of the
British Museum the papers, documents, speeches, and motions in
Parliament, Reports of Parliamentary Committees, and all such evidence
and information tending to throw light upon, from the year 1832 onwards,
the history and events preceding the reformed system of postage
introduced to the public in the year 1837 by the then Mr. Rowland Hill.
My father long since dead (while I was abroad), and his establishment
long ago broken up, difficulty was at first experienced in obtaining the
specific evidence necessary to enable me to establish my claim on his
behalf, but the attention publicly drawn to the matter by former
publications of my own, and of Mr. Pearson Hill to which I was called
upon to reply, brought forward ever-increasing evidence of the most
conclusive nature, and to which I am now enabled to add material and
interesting confirmation from papers left by the late Sir Henry Cole,
whose connection with the Penny Postage Reform of 1837-40 is well
known.