[11] "Patrick Chalmers, Sir Rowland Hill, and James Chalmers, Inventor of the Adhesive Stamp (London, 1882), _passim_." See also the same writer's pamphlet, entitled "The Position of Sir Rowland Hill made plain (1882)," and his "The Adhesive Stamp; a Fresh Chapter in the History of Post-Office Reform (1881)." Compare Mr. Pearson Hill's tract, "A Paper on Postage Stamps," in reply to Mr. Chalmers, reprinted from the "Philatelic Record," of November, 1881. Mr. Hill has therein shown conclusively the priority of _publication_ by Sir Rowland Hill. He has also given proof of Mr. James Chalmers' express acknowledgment of that priority. But he has not weakened the evidence of the priority of _invention_ by Mr. Chalmers. [This admission on the part of Mr. Chalmers, obtained through an obscuring and consequent misapprehension of the facts, was, of course, wholly invalid. Even if valid, it will be seen at page 44 that such priority of publication of an idea "suggested from without" was of no practical consequence.--P.C.] [12] "Ninth Report of Commissioners of Post-Office Inquiry, 1837," pp. 32, 33, reprinted in Sir R. Hill's "History of Penny Postage" ("Life," &c., ii. 270). [13] [That Mr. Chalmers had not made an earlier offer of his stamp _officially_ is accounted for by the proposals of 1834 with respect to a penny postage on newspapers, in place of an impressed stamp of fourpence on the sheet, having come to nothing.--P.C.] [14] _I.e._, by prohibiting the prepayment of letters in money. [15] "Ninth Report," as above. [16] 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. [17] "History of Penny Postage," as above. [18] _Ibid._ [19] Hill, _et supra_, p. 398. [20] In lately replying to Mr. Pearson Hill in the columns of the _Whitehall Review_, I have put this query, which has not been denied, "Will Mr. Pearson Hill undertake to say that he has not made a communication, written or verbal, similar to the above letter to Messrs. A. & C. Black to every editor in London, if not throughout a wider sphere?"