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.