Note 162 — Chapter VI

For the adhesive stamp, see “Post Office Reform,” p. 45, and “Ninth Report of the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry,” p. 38. The impressed stamp is mentioned in “Post Office Reform” at p. 42, and also in that “Ninth Report.” The writer of the “Encyclopædia Britannica's” article (xix. 585), while quoting Rowland Hill's description of the adhesive stamp, adds: “It is quite a fair inference that this alternative had been suggested from without,” but gives no reason for hazarding so entirely baseless an assertion. The article, indeed, bears not a few traces of what looks like personal malice; and it is a pity that the editorial revising pen, whether from indolence or from misunderstanding of the subject on its wielder's part, was suffered to lie idle.