human
Everything else was to be left open.
gpt
If it were to go forth to the public to-morrow morning that the Government had proposed, and the House had adopted, the plan of Mr. Rowland Hill, the necessary result would be to spread a conviction abroad that, as a stamped cover was absolutely to be used in all cases, which stamped covers were to be made by one single manufacturer, alarm would be felt lest a monopoly would thereby be created, to the serious detriment of other members of a most useful and important trade. The sense of injustice excited by this would necessarily be extreme. I therefore do not call upon the House either to affirm or to negative any such proposition at the present. I ask you simply to affirm the adoption of a uniform penny postage, and the taxation of that postage by weight. Neither do I ask you to pledge yourselves to the prepayment of letters, for I am of opinion that, at all events, there should be an option of putting letters into the post without a stamp.
human
If the resolution be affirmed, and the Bill has to be proposed, it will hereafter require very great care and complicated arrangements to carry the plan into practical effect. It may involve considerable expense and considerable responsibility on the part of the Government; it may disturb existing trades, such as the paper trade. ...
gpt
The new postage will be distinctly and simply a penny postage by weight. ...
human
I also require for the Treasury a power of taking the postage by anticipation, and a power of allowing such postage to be taken by means of stamped covers, and I also require the authority of rating the postage according to weight.
gpt
Why were their lordships thus called upon at this period of the session to pass a Bill, when no mortal being at that moment had the remotest conception of how it was to be carried into execution? Here Lord Ashburton, like Mr. Wallace in the Commons, favourably suggested the adhesive stamp,
human
Sir Rowland Hill and James Chalmers, the Inventor of the Adhesive Stamp,
gpt
Hansard,
human
Sir Rowland Hill and James Chalmers, the Inventor of the Adhesive Stamp, I have already proved from overwhelming evidence, both general and specific, the invention of the adhesive stamp for postage purposes by the late James Chalmers, bookseller, Dundee, in the month of August, 1834. In addition to friends and fellow-townsmen, several of those in his employment at that period have, unknown to me, come forward from various quarters to describe the process and to fix the date. The setting up of the form with a number of stamps having a printed device--the printing of the sheets--the melting of the gum--the gumming the backs of the sheets--the drying and the pressing--are all described, and the date already named is conclusively fixed.[2] That this was the first instance of such invention is clear; earlier instances of an _impressed_ stamp proposed for postage purposes are on record, but not one of a proposed adhesive stamp--while Sir Rowland Hill himself has left it on record, in his
gpt
Life, referring to the same period and occasion when an impressed stamp was proposed in 1834 for newspaper covers by Mr. Knight,