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 unassuming 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 assuming or allowing to be assumed 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 At one period, indeed, I had withdrawn from the whole matter, until recalled to it by Mr.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: