The Adhesive Postage Stamp Part 4

"SIR,

"I have read the pamphlet you sent me. Your statements are very interesting. It is nothing uncommon for the man to whom the idea first occurs to have it developed by others, who get the credit of it.

"Yours truly, "(Signed) T. J. NELSON.

"PATRICK CHALMERS, Esq.

Wimbledon."

If plagiarism is not uncommon it is none the less unfair to the original inventor, nor the less to be deprecated, more especially where the result has been to obtain unmerited "credit" heaped upon the wrong man at the expense of the man to whom "the idea first occurred," and who further, as is now more fully proved since Sir Thomas Nelson wrote, also first urged its "development" to the very man who ultimately took all the "credit" to himself. To plagiarism such as this a stronger term is applicable.

Sir Bartle Frere writes:--

"WRESSIL LODGE, WIMBLEDON, _21st April, 1883_.

"SIR,

"I have received your letter of the 20th, and thank you for its enclosures on the subject of the invention of the adhesive postage stamp.

"I have long believed that Mr. James Chalmers was the inventor of that important part of our present postal system, but I regret that I cannot suggest to you any means of giving further publicity to your father's claims to the merit of that most useful invention.

"I remain, SIR,

"Yours truly, (Signed) H. B. E. FRERE.

"P. CHALMERS, Esq."

Sir Bartle Frere introduced the adhesive postage stamp into Scinde during his administration of that province, having obtained his knowledge and belief as to James Chalmers having been the originator of same from independent sources thirty years before my own investigation of the subject.

In some quarters this matter is ignored on the ground that the subject of this pamphlet is not of sufficient importance or too late to call for notice. To such I reply--"Then let the issue of the adhesive stamp (see page 52) be discontinued." Should it be found that such cannot be done without serious detriment to the public service, then surely to continue to use a man's indispensable invention and proposal without so much as a word of recognition, will, if adhered to, prove a course of proceeding hard indeed to justify, as well as something wholly foreign to the antecedents of British journalism.