The design is well-known to all our readers and as it has already been extensively dissected in the above quotations, further comment is hardly necessary. The new stamps naturally caused lots of criticism on account of their somewhat bombastic legend “We hold a vaster Empire than has been”. This was taken from the jubilee ode written by Sir Lewis Morris on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, the last stanza of which reads as follows:—
We love not war, but only peace,
Yet never shall our England's power decrease!
Whoever guides our helm of state,
Let all men know it, England shall be great!
We hold a vaster empire than has been!
Nigh half the race of man is subject to our Queen!
Nigh half the wide, wide earth is ours in fee!
And where her rule comes all are free.
And therefore 'tis, O Queen, than we,
Knit fast in bonds of temperate liberty,
Rejoice today, and make our solemn jubilee!
The stamps were printed in the usual sheet arrangement of one hundred, arranged in ten horizontal rows of ten. The black portion was printed from line-engraved plates but the colored portions were, apparently, printed by lithography. Consequently, three operations were necessary before the stamps were completed and, as may readily be understood, a three color process in such a small compass made exact register a matter of difficulty. Thus on many stamps portions of the Empire are found much out of place, sometimes wandering into the sea and sometimes encroaching in an altogether too familiar manner on their neighbours. The new stamps came in for much criticism, of which the following extract from the Monthly Journal for January, 1899, is a fair sample:—
It is not quite an occasion for captious criticism, and when we get a beautiful colored map of the world for a penny perhaps we ought not to criticise; but we cannot think that the design is a very appropriate one for a postage stamp. The blobs of red are not always quite correctly placed; we have even heard of cases in which a little irregularity of “register” has resulted in the annexation of the greater part of the United States, while England invaded France, and the Cape of Good Hope went out to sea!
The Canadian newspapers are not quite happy about it, but that is natural, as they are to pay extra postage in future to make up any deficiency in the budget caused by the reduction in the Imperial rate; we hear that even a Ministerial organ at Ontario complains that the new stamp is too large to lick and too small for wall paper! Some people are never satisfied.
The color chosen for the sea portion of the map was lavender at first, but as this was not considered altogether appropriate it was soon afterwards changed to sea-green. In addition to these two tints it also comes in a very pronounced blue.
The line-engraved plates from which the black portion of the design was printed have four marginal imprints consisting of AMERICAN BANK NOTE CO. OTTAWA in Roman capitals ½ mm. high, the whole inscription being 29 mm. long. These are placed above the third and eighth stamps of the top row and below the corresponding stamps of the bottom row. In addition a plate number, in hair-line figures about 4 mm. high, is shown above the division between the two central stamps of the top row, these figures being placed higher on the margin than the imprints. Mr. Howes tells us that plates 1, 2, 3, and 5 are known but that plate 4 does not seem to have been recorded though, presumably, it exists. All four plates are known with the lavender sea and this is known to indicate the first printings, it would appear that all the plates were at press together.
The late Mr. H. L. Ewen wrote an exhaustive article on the numerous varieties of this stamp but as most of these were simply due to errors of register their philatelic importance is slight. One variety, however, which is constant is worthy of note. In this two small dots representing two islands in mid-pacific are shown side by side instead of one above the other as on the normal stamps. Mr. Ewen also referred to a slight retouching of one of the plates, viz.:—
Readers will have noted that the stamps are each surrounded by what appears to be a rope. On the sheet of plate 3 before us, the outer edge of this rope on the stamps at the end of each row (right hand side of each sheet) has worn away and has been replaced by a straight line engraved on the plate, except on stamp No. 80, which still shows the very defective nature of the rope.