[11] "Patrick Chalmers, Sir Rowland Hill, and James Chalmers, Inventor
of the Adhesive Stamp (London, 1882), _passim_." See also the same
writer's pamphlet, entitled "The Position of Sir Rowland Hill made plain
(1882)," and his "The Adhesive Stamp; a Fresh Chapter in the History of
Post-Office Reform (1881)." Compare Mr. Pearson Hill's tract, "A Paper
on Postage Stamps," in reply to Mr. Chalmers, reprinted from the
"Philatelic Record," of November, 1881. Mr. Hill has therein shown
conclusively the priority of _publication_ by Sir Rowland Hill. He has
also given proof of Mr. James Chalmers' express acknowledgment of that
priority. But he has not weakened the evidence of the priority of
_invention_ by Mr. Chalmers.
[This admission on the part of Mr. Chalmers, obtained through an
obscuring and consequent misapprehension of the facts, was, of course,
wholly invalid. Even if valid, it will be seen at page 44 that such
priority of publication of an idea "suggested from without" was of no
practical consequence.--P.C.]
[12] "Ninth Report of Commissioners of Post-Office Inquiry, 1837," pp.
32, 33, reprinted in Sir R. Hill's "History of Penny Postage" ("Life,"
&c., ii. 270).
[13] [That Mr. Chalmers had not made an earlier offer of his stamp
_officially_ is accounted for by the proposals of 1834 with respect to a
penny postage on newspapers, in place of an impressed stamp of fourpence
on the sheet, having come to nothing.--P.C.]
[14] _I.e._, by prohibiting the prepayment of letters in money.
[15] "Ninth Report," as above.
[16] Moreover, what Sir Rowland Hill does _not_ tell in his "History,"
is that the compulsion to use a stamp in all cases was, in his _original
evidence_ in this Ninth Report, at once _withdrawn_, the permission to
pay the penny in cash being restored, so that the person "unable to
write" was at once relieved of all "difficulty," and no bit of gummed
paper required even in the exceptional case supposed. (See my former
pamphlet, page 56.) Keeping this fact in view, there is thus only a
passing "allusion" here in February, 1837, to the adhesive stamp, and
nothing more, not even a partial proposal to use it. This clause
restoring the permission to pay the penny in place of using any stamp,
is taken no notice of by Sir Rowland Hill "in reviewing the subject long
afterwards."--P.C.
[17] "History of Penny Postage," as above.
[18] _Ibid._
[19] Hill, _et supra_, p. 398.
[20] In lately replying to Mr. Pearson Hill in the columns of the
_Whitehall Review_, I have put this query, which has not been denied,
"Will Mr. Pearson Hill undertake to say that he has not made a
communication, written or verbal, similar to the above letter to Messrs.
A. & C. Black to every editor in London, if not throughout a wider
sphere?"
[21] One mode of stifling the subject has been to circulate the
impression that I am a person under the hallucination that "his father
invented the _Penny Postage scheme_," thus rendering my claim too
ludicrous to obtain attention. See, amongst others, the _Times_ and
_Daily News_ of 13th July, 1881.