THE PENNY POSTAGE SCHEME OF SIR ROWLAND HILL NOT ORIGINAL.

My business, of course, in the investigation just named, was to ascertain what plan Sir Rowland Hill had proposed in his pamphlet of 1837 for the purpose of carrying out his Penny Postage Scheme, and to trace therefrom the adoption on his part of my father's plan of the adhesive stamp. But a discovery of much more historical importance before long presented itself, namely, that neither the conception of uniform penny postage itself, nor of any one of the valuable principles and figures of the penny postage scheme, were original conceptions on the part of Sir Rowland Hill.

The reformed system of postage was not the work of one year nor of one man. For some years prior to 1837 the abuses and mismanagement of the post office were a constant theme of complaint, both in and out of Parliament—many able and earnest men combined to bring about some reform demanded by men of business and public opinion. Commissions of inquiry were held, evidence and suggestions taken, reports issued. Early in 1835 Mr. Wallace, M.P. for Greenock, a prominent post-office reformer, obtained a Commission of Inquiry on the subject, which Commission issued in all ten Reports; while, in addition to Parliamentary returns, a commission, termed the Commission of Revenue Inquiry, had sat for many years prior to the Commission of merely Post Office Inquiry, and had issued twenty-three Reports, in more than one of which post-office affairs were dealt with.

In that large field of complaint, suggestion, information, and proposal may be found the substance, origin, and foundation of the subsequent writings and proposals of Sir Rowland Hill.

It will be remembered that the old system of postage, prior to 1840, was that of a high and variable charge according to distance, of, say, twopence to one shilling and sixpence a letter, charged by sheet; and two sheets, however light in weight, were charged double. The same with circulars. But in these Reports, including the evidence of the numerous witnesses, are to be found embodied all the valuable principles and figures of the reformed system. And that all these Reports had come under Mr. Hill's review is left in no doubt, having been sent to him by Mr. Wallace, after Mr. Hill, freed from other occupations, had, in 1835, joined the circle of post-office reformers, when he "commenced that systematic study, analysis, and comparison which the difficulty of my self-imposed task rendered necessary."—("Life," page 246.)

But to be looked upon as the inventor of that scheme which he had introduced and (saved and rendered practicable by the adhesive stamp) had successfully carried out—to have this scheme understood as having been the unaided conception of his own mind—was with Sir Rowland Hill simply a mania, and to that mania James Chalmers, the originator in every sense of that adhesive stamp, was sacrificed.

The bearing of all this non-originality of conception on the part of Sir Rowland Hill is obvious when the question of the stamp is under consideration. In propounding the scheme itself, what were only acquired ideas were assumed, or allowed to be assumed, as inventions or conceptions. As with the scheme, so with the stamp—the stamp also was an acquired idea, not Rowland Hill's invention.

Having now, however, obtained from a quarter of the highest standing, after an impartial investigation, a full acknowledgment of my father's services, and this in addition to an already large amount of recognition from the press in general, further observations as to the non-originality of the scheme may be here dispensed with, for the present at least, and left to history. And if I have been compelled to show that, so far from the adhesive stamp having been the invention of Sir Rowland Hill, originality of conception formed no element whatever in any one of the proposals of even the Penny Postage Scheme itself, such course has been forced upon me by the unfortunate proceedings of Mr. Pearson Hill in denying, against the clearest evidence, my just claim in the matter of the stamp, without a pretence of proof that such was at any period an invention on the part of Sir Rowland Hill.