The Adhesive Postage Stamp Part 2

THE "ENCYCLOPaeDIA BRITANNICA."

The nineteenth volume of the above-named standard work, lately published, contains an article headed "Postage Stamps," in which my late father is fully recognised as having been the inventor of the adhesive postage stamp. It is well known that the articles in this work are drawn up by learned experts upon the respective subjects dealt with, having access to and being in the habit of consulting official and historical doc.u.ments, and edited under a strong sense of responsibility to the high standing of the work itself and to history; so that it is with unspeakable satisfaction that I now find myself enabled to produce from such a quarter an emphatic recognition of my father's services in connection with the great boon of Penny Postage reform.

This article, so far as it deals with the origin of the adhesive stamp, is as follows; but in considering same it should be borne in mind that the article was drawn up _before_ the discovery of Mr. Chalmers' plan amongst the papers of the late Sir Henry Cole, with the consequent proofs given in the last chapter as to Mr. Chalmers having taken the initiative in urging the adoption of this stamp, not only to Members of the Select Committee of the House of Commons of 1837-38, but to Mr.

Rowland Hill himself, long before Mr. Hill, in his paper of 1839 (see _ante_, page 21), gave in his adhesion to that plan in conjunction with his own:--

"POSTAGE STAMPS.--For all practical purposes the history of postage stamps begins in the United Kingdom, and with the great reform of its postal system in 1839-40." After giving instances in which the _impressed_ stamp had been in use, or had been suggested for postal purposes in this country and elsewhere, the article proceeds:--"Finally, and in its results most important of all, the 'adhesive stamp' was made, experimentally, in his printing-office at Dundee, by Mr. James Chalmers, in August, 1834.[11] These experimental stamps were printed from ordinary type, and were made adhesive by a wash of gum. Their inventor had already won local distinction in matters of postal reform by his strenuous and successful efforts, made as early as in the year 1822, for the acceleration of the Scottish mails from London. Those efforts resulted in a saving of forty-eight hours on the double journey, and were highly appreciated in Scotland. There is evidence that from 1822 onwards his attention was much directed towards postal questions, and that he held correspondence with the postal reformers of his day both in and out of Parliament. It is also plain that he was more intent upon aiding public improvements than upon winning credit for them. He made adhesive stamps in 1834, and showed them to his neighbours, but took no step for publicly recommending their adoption by the Post Office until long after such a recommendation had been published--although very hesitatingly--by the author of the now famous pamphlet ent.i.tled 'Post Office Reform.'[12] Mr. Hill brought the adhesive stamp under the notice of the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry on the 13th February, 1837.

Mr. Chalmers made no _public_ mention of his stamp of 1834 until December, 1837."[13]

"Only a fortnight before his examination by the above-named Commissioners Mr. Hill, in his letter to the late Lord Monteagle (then Mr. Spring Rice, and Chancellor of the Exchequer), seems to have had no thought of the _adhesive_ stamp. He recommends to the Treasury 'that stamped covers and sheets of paper be supplied to the public from the Stamp Office or Post Office ... and sold at such a price as to include the postage.... Covers at various prices would be required for packets of various weights. Each should have the weight it is ent.i.tled to carry legibly printed with the stamp.... Should experience warrant the Government in making the use of stamped covers universal,[14] most important advantages would be secured. The Post Office would be relieved altogether from the collection of the revenue.'[15]

"Then, upon suggestion, it would seem, of some possible difficulty that might arise from the occasional bringing to a post-office by persons unable to write, of unstamped letters, he added: 'Perhaps this difficulty might be obviated by using a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous wash.' It is a quite fair inference that this alternative had been suggested from without.[16] In reviewing the subject, long afterwards, in his 'History of Penny Postage,' Sir R. Hill says: 'The Post-Office opinions as to the use of stamps for ... prepayment were on the whole favourable.'[17] In a paper of 1839, ent.i.tled 'On the Collection of Postage by means of Stamps,' the author continued to look upon 'stamped covers or envelopes as the means which the public would most commonly employ; still believing that the adhesive stamp would be reserved for exceptional cases.'[18]

"Mulready's well-remembered allegorical cover came into use on 1st May, 1840, together with the first form of the stamped letter-paper, and the adhesive labels. They all met at first, but only for a few days, with a large sale. That of the first day yielded 2,500. Soon afterwards the public rejection of the 'Mulready envelope,' writes Rowland Hill, 'was so complete as to necessitate the destruction of nearly all the vast number prepared for issue.' Whilst, on the other hand, the presses of the Stamp Office were producing more than half a million of [adhesive]

labels, by working both night and day, they yet failed to meet the demand.[19] It was only after many weeks, and after the introduction of a series of mechanical improvements and new processes, due to the skill and ingenuity in part of Mr. Edwin Hill of the Stamp Office, in part of Mr. Perkins, an engraver, that the demand could be effectually answered."

The above emphatic decision on the part of eminent men whom I have never seen in favour of James Chalmers as having been the inventor of the adhesive postage stamp, will give much satisfaction in those numerous quarters from which I have already met with countenance and support.

After a full consideration of the respective statements put forward by myself and by Mr. Pearson Hill on the subject, James Chalmers at length obtains a recognition of which he has, as a rule, been only too long deprived. And that the same man who invented this stamp also first proposed its adoption has been already too clearly shown to require repet.i.tion here. Surely Sir Rowland Hill's "paper of 1839," mentioned in this article, was a trifle behindhand, when I have just proved from Sir Henry Cole's papers that Mr. Chalmers had already laid his plan before Mr. Hill himself in February, 1838. Did Mr. Hill tell us _that_ in his paper of 1839? No. Did he tell us that he drew up this paper of 1839 under a pressing demand for the adhesive stamp from all quarters? No.

_Was it fair of Sir Rowland Hill to allow the readers of his "History of Penny Postage," or of his paper of 1839, to conclude that this proposal on his part of 1839 was put forward of his own initiation, and this with Mr. Chalmers' plan and statement of February, 1838, already in his possession?_ A plan which, in his reply to Mr. Chalmers of 3rd March following, Mr. Hill had pooh-poohed! Moreover, in referring to this "paper of 1839" in his "History of Penny Postage," vol. 1, page 346, Sir Rowland Hill takes special credit to himself for having therein recommended that the adhesive stamps "should be printed on sheets,"

putting same forward as a further idea of his own, and wholly ignoring the fact of such having been a special feature, "for sale in sheets or singly," in that plan of Mr. Chalmers _which lay before him_. (See _ante_, page 24.) It is unfortunate that the writer of this article was not at the time of writing in possession of the whole facts of the case, when doubtless Mr. Hill's "paper of 1839" would have been characterised as it deserved. Sir Rowland Hill's mode of obtaining credit for "inventions" or proposals of other men will now be better understood.

If Mr. Hill alluded to this adhesive stamp (the admitted invention of Mr. Chalmers in 1834) in February, 1837, while Mr. Chalmers urged its adoption officially only in December, this, it will be seen, arose from Mr. Hill having been privileged to give evidence on postal affairs before the Commissioners of Inquiry. The proposal of 1834 with respect to newspapers came to nothing; consequently there was no opening _then_ for Mr. Chalmers to send in his invention _officially_. In sending in his plan to the Select Committee of the House of Commons in December, 1837, Mr. Chalmers was still a year and a half before the Penny Postage Bill was even introduced into Parliament. Mr. Hill did not adopt same until he issued his "paper of 1839." Mr. Hill's allusion to this stamp in February, 1837, this "publishing" of the idea "very hesitatingly,"

had no practical effect whatever on the cause in hand; such only shows that Mr. Hill had heard of the invention of 1834, without seeing its value or proposing to adopt it. Moreover, Mr. Chalmers was publishing his own invention, while Mr. Hill was only publishing an acquired idea, "suggested from without." It is to the man who not only invented the adhesive postage stamp, but who further first urged the adoption of same in its entirety for the purpose of carrying out the Penny Postage scheme, that the merit of this plan and of its results are due and will be ascribed.

But if I was to stop here I should be told now, as I have been told before on obtaining important recognitions, that the present decision in my favour was again got upon mere _ex-parte_ statements--that had Mr.

Pearson Hill only been given the opportunity, a very different aspect would have been put upon the matter. No choice, consequently, is left me but to show that it is to Mr. Pearson Hill himself I am indebted for the introduction which has led to my success, and without which introduction, now reproduced, I should have remained in entire ignorance as to any forthcoming article upon postal affairs, or have been most courteously afforded an opportunity of stating my case:--

[_Copy._]

"ENCYCLOPaeDIA BRITANNICA."

"50, BELSIZE PARK, LONDON, N.W., _15th March, 1883_.

"GENTLEMEN,

"As you are now issuing a new edition of your 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' and as for years past a Mr. Patrick Chalmers has persistently been making false and groundless charges against my father, the late Sir Rowland Hill, I think it well to send you the enclosed printed doc.u.ments for your information, as it is by no means improbable that he may strive to get you to insert some untrue statement when you deal with the question of the Post Office and Postal Reform.

"I need hardly say that I shall be happy at any time to submit to you the original doc.u.ments which are in my possession, which disprove the claims put forward in behalf of Mr. James Chalmers of Dundee, if you would desire to see them.

"Your statistical information about the Post Office, as given in my copy of the Encyclopaedia (the eighth edition) is of course now much behindhand. I dare say you have already on your staff of contributors some gentleman well able to supply you with fresh information; but should you be in want of any such help, I feel sure that my cousin, Mr. Lewin Hill, head of the statistical branch of the Secretary's office, General Post Office, London, would gladly undertake the work if you desired it.

"I am, Gentlemen,

"Your obedient servant, "(Signed) PEARSON HILL.

"MESSRS. A. & C. BLACK, Edinburgh."

It is thus manifest that, in having obtained this conclusive recognition, I have taken no undue advantage of Mr. Pearson Hill, while it will also be manifest that Mr. Pearson Hill's statements have found acceptance in other quarters only because I have not been afforded an equally impartial hearing as in the present case. His printed doc.u.ments, his statements, with all the advantage of being sole possessor of the correspondence betwixt his late father and mine, have been put forward, and yet the decision is against him.

Again, as respects the penny postage scheme itself, the proofs are conclusive that _originality of conception_ formed no element whatever in any one of the proposals of Sir Rowland Hill, preceded and heralded as the penny postage reform had been by the labours of a whole band of pioneers. Special reference may be made to the statements of the Rev.

Samuel Roberts, whose biography as the pioneer of uniform penny postal reform is given in the _Times_ of 30th September last. The "Rowland Hill Memorial Fund" Committee have themselves admitted, after what has been laid before them, their sense of this non-originality by the change made in the inscription upon the City statue of Sir Rowland Hill, thereby confirming the accuracy of my statements. Moreover, a Treasury Minute of 11th March, 1864, distinctly states that uniform penny postage had been urged upon the Government prior to the proposals of Sir Rowland Hill.

Thus, independent and conclusive testimony, as distinguished from the mere family tradition with which many writers have hitherto been content, leaves the question of plagiarism beyond dispute. As with the stamp, so with the scheme, the ideas were _acquired, not original_.

Here, then, is the justification of my statements. So far from having been "persistently making false and groundless charges," I have been stating facts and elucidating the truth, and the aspersions of Mr.

Pearson Hill are thus scattered to the winds.

For Mr. Pearson Hill, however, every allowance will be made, though his style of controversy will not be admired. That gentleman forgets that my motives and objects are just as legitimate as his own, and should be met in a legitimate way. This leads me to mention that some time ago Mr.

Samuel Morley, M.P. (at one period chairman of the "Sir Rowland Hill Memorial Fund" Committee) was good enough to suggest that this controversy should be decided by arbitration, and to which I agreed in principle, subject to due preliminaries, but met with no response. At a later period, in a letter already published, after pointing to my own evidence, I invited Mr. Morley's good offices, seeing that Mr. Pearson Hill declined to reply to or even to open any letter from me, to ascertain from Mr. Hill if he could produce any evidence, or anything beyond mere a.s.sumption, to the effect that the adhesive postage stamp was at any period an invention on the part of Sir Rowland Hill, but I was equally unsuccessful in obtaining any reply, there being, in fact, nothing beyond a.s.sumption in the matter. Nowhere does Sir Rowland Hill directly profess that this stamp was his invention.

My friends, both in and out of the press, who have been puzzled at the silence of many of the London papers on this subject, will now be in a position to form some conclusion as to the cause of this silence. What has been sent to the Messrs. Black and to the Commissioners of City Sewers, may have been sent to the London papers; indeed, I have been given to understand has been generally circulated in these quarters, already compromised in their expressed opinions, and so in no way disposed to entertain fresh views.[20] My opponents, some of them in high position, others themselves connected with the press, are desirous, and naturally so, that public attention should not be drawn to my statements.[21] In this way, crushed beneath the weight of a hitherto great name, statements have been disregarded which, when read and investigated as in the case of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," have been found substantiated.

I ask my supporters and others, therefore, to read and judge for themselves. Whether the London papers, hitherto silent, seeing the important recognition my claim has now met with, and the fresh and conclusive evidence now disclosed from the papers of Sir Henry Cole, will also now read and admit some discussion of this matter of public interest in their columns, remains to be seen. In any case, an enduring record of my father's share in the great postal reform of 1837-40 is secured. A work of the highest standing, and a reference to which is the first act of historical writers, has recorded James Chalmers as having been the originator of that adhesive postage stamp which saved the reformed scheme. Moreover, in lands beyond the sea, an interest is taken in this subject wholly unknown here; individuals and learned societies collect for their own information, and hand down for future perusal, everything published on the great Penny Postage reform, and in some of these quarters amazement is expressed at the single-hero-worship which prevails in this country with respect to a subject which investigation shows to have been the offspring of many minds, the result of the labours of not a few zealous but una.s.suming men.

The services of Sir Rowland Hill, already cordially recognised in my pamphlets, it would be superfluous again to dwell upon here. And if, while cordially pointing out these great services, it has also fallen to my lot to put a fresh and less favourable aspect upon their nature and extent than hitherto understood, to bring to light his great failing of a.s.suming or allowing to be a.s.sumed as conceptions of his own what were only acquired ideas, of omitting to notice what it was not convenient to notice, let it be remembered that such has been forced upon me as a necessity solely in the pursuit of what is now declared to have been a just claim. At one period, indeed, I had withdrawn from the whole matter, until recalled to it by Mr. Pearson Hill himself in a published statement to which I was challenged to reply. My replies, under ever-increasing and conclusive evidence, have now been put forward. Should the result not have proved such as the best friends of Sir Rowland Hill could have desired, upon his own son, and not upon me, rests the responsibility. It is enough for me that my father's memory as the originator and inventor of the adhesive postage stamp has been successfully vindicated.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] "Patrick Chalmers, Sir Rowland Hill, and James Chalmers, Inventor of the Adhesive Stamp (London, 1882), _pa.s.sim_." See also the same writer's pamphlet, ent.i.tled "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 pa.s.sing "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.