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 period of the session to pass a Bill, when no mortal
being at that moment had the remotest conception of how it was to be
carried into execution?" Here Lord Ashburton, like Mr. Wallace in the
Commons, favourably suggested the adhesive stamp, "which would answer
every purpose, and remove the objection of the stationers and paper
makers to the measure."
Let it, then, be clearly noted that, up to the period of the Bill in
July and August, 1839, not a word is said in any way connecting Mr.
Hill's name with other than the impressed stamp on the sheet of letter
paper, or, more especially, on the stamped covers. That, _and that
alone_, is taken on the one part as _his_ plan by all the speakers,
official or otherwise--for that alone does the Chancellor of the
Exchequer ask for "powers." The adhesive stamp is brought in, on the
other part, as a distinct proposal, in no way entering into the
proposals of Mr. Hill.
(The above is given in more detail in my former pamphlet, entitled "Sir
Rowland Hill and James Chalmers, the Inventor of the Adhesive Stamp,"
1883).