[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is that the compulsion to use a stamp in all cases was, in his original evidence in this Ninth Report, at once withdrawn, the permission to pay the penny in cash being restored, so that the person "unable to write" was at once relieved of all "difficulty," and no bit of gummed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.
VALUE AND IMPORTANCE OF
THE ADHESIVE STAMP.
"Why should we be called upon to pass this Penny Postage Bill," said the opponents of that measure in August, 1839, "when no mortal being had at that moment the remotest conception of how it was to be carried into execution?" Mr. Rowland Hill's plan of the impressed stamp had not satisfied the Committee. This plan, as amended by the Committee, had not satisfied the Government. (See ante, page 13.) The paper makers and stationers were in a state of protest and alarm. "This part of the business must stand over," said the Government of the day, "How to carry out the scheme will require much consideration." It was here that James Chalmers, through Mr. Wallace, Chairman of the Committee, stepped in—the adhesive stamp saved the scheme. That was the value and importance of his invention and proposal. It satisfied the paper trade; "Let the stationer, not the Stamp Office," said Mr. Chalmers, "sell the paper, the Post Office the stamp." He saved the scheme of Mr. Hill to the country by relieving and setting agoing the clogged wheels of penny postage—he supplied the engines to the much admired but immovable craft and sent her speeding smoothly and swiftly upon her beneficent mission.