Note 16 — THE "ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA."

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is that the compulsion to use a stamp in all cases was, in his original evidence in this Ninth Report, at once withdrawn, the permission to pay the penny in cash being restored, so that the person "unable to write" was at once relieved of all "difficulty," and no bit of gummed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.