Note 161 — Chapter VI

Inaccuracy of memory applies to other things than invention of postage stamps. Here is a curious instance. “Sir John Kaye, in writing his history of the Sepoy War, said he was often obliged to reject as convincing proof even the overwhelming assertion, 'But I was there.' 'It is hard,' he continues, 'to disbelieve a man of honour when he tells you what he himself did; but every writer long engaged in historical enquiry has had before him instances in which men, even after a brief lapse of time, have confounded in their minds the thought of doing, or the intent to do, a certain thing with the fact of actually having done it. Indeed, in the commonest affairs of daily life we often find the intent mistaken for the act, in retrospect.' Kaye was writing at a period of not more than ten to twelve years after the events which he was narrating. When you extend ten years to twenty or twenty-four, memories grow still more impaired, and the difficulty of ensuring accuracy becomes increasingly greater.” (Thus “The Reformer,” A. and H. B. Bonner, vii. 36, 37.) Most of the claims to invention of the postage stamp seem to have been made considerably more than ten, twelve, twenty, or twenty-four years after its introduction—some of them curiously, or, at any rate, opportunely enough, forty years or so after; that is about the time of Rowland Hill's death, or but little later.