and experiment, I succeeded in producing a stamp which satisfied all the necessary conditions; then follow the intervals between my several interviews with Sir Charles Presley, and also the five or six weeks occupied by Mr. Porter in engraving the die, which was accepted by the Stamp Office authorities; and then came the application to Parliament for an Act to empower the Commissioners of Stamps to call in all the old stamps and issue new ones in lieu of them. This Act of Parliament, if I correctly understood Sir Charles Presley, was hurried through the House in six or eight weeks; it was, in fact, as I now find, passed on August 29th, 1833, or just seven months and ten days after I was twenty years of age; thus, proving how accurate I was in my statement of the period when these transactions took place, and which family matters had impressed indelibly on the memory.

I mentioned also in my letter to The Times that an Act of Parliament was passed calling in all stocks of stamps dispersed throughout the country, and authorising the issue of the new dated ones. I did not know of my own knowledge that such an Act had been passed, but I perfectly well remember being told so by Sir Charles Presley, because it was an absolute assurance to me that my plans would be adopted; but I relied solely on Sir Charles Presley's statement to that effect. Hence, when it occurred to me that this Act of Parliament would form a most important link in the chain of evidence I desired to establish, I must confess to some trepidation lest Sir Charles had misinformed me, or had spoken only of an Act in the course of passing through Parliament, but which might have been thrown out and never passed at all; thus, when I applied to my solicitor to obtain, if possible, a copy of the Act in question, I was greatly pleased to find that not only was the statement of Sir Charles Presley (repeated by me in The Times) confirmed, but I found that this Act of Parliament⁵ in its preamble admitted the fact that "the laws heretofore enacted, and now in force in Great Britain, have been FOUND INSUFFICIENT TO PREVENT THE SELLING AND UTTERING OF FORGED STAMPS ON VELLUM, PARCHMENT, AND PAPER.

Powers are given under the different sections of this Act to BUY UP AND DESTROY ALL STAMPS AND STAMPED PARCHMENTS then in possession of all vendors of stamps throughout the country. Full powers are also given to the Commissioners to DISCONTINUE the use of ALL DIES HERETOFORE USED in the Stamp Office, and authorising the employment of ANY NEW DIE OR DIES, With such DEVICE OR DEVICES as the Commissioners MAY THINK FIT.

The Act also declares that after three months from that date all stamps previously issued, or any deeds stamped therewith, shall be deemed to be illegal.

Then follows a most stringent clause (Section 12), making it felony punishable by TRANSPORTATION FOR LIFE BEYOND SEAS, for any person to JOIN, FIX, OR PLACE UPON any vellum parchment or paper, any stamp, mark or impression, which shall have been CUT, TORN, OR GOTTEN OFF, OR REMOVED from any Vellum, parchment or paper, etc.

The object of this last clause is clearly to add, by the terrors of a most sweeping and stringent penal law, to the security which the new stamp was calculated to afford against the heavy losses which the Government had for so many years sustained by the transfer of stamps from one deed to another; and bears evidence, as indeed does the whole document, of the perfect state of panic into which the Stamp Office was thrown when they fully realised the extreme facility which my method of making composition dies from any paper impressions afforded for successfully forging every description of embossed stamp.

It is almost impossible to realise the spectacle afforded by one of the most conservative of all the institutions of the State -- one which has stood its ground for generations -- suddenly and without the smallest reserve flinging over every tradition of the past, repudiating all its former issues, and buying back again from the public all the stamps it could lay hands upon, for no better purpose than their destruction, and proclaiming by advertisement that their use, if not brought back, would be illegal; thus suddenly waking up, as it were, from a long period of fancied security, and seeking in hot haste powers from the legislature to protect them by the most severe of all penal laws next to that of death, and asking at the same time full powers to search all domiciles, shops, warehouses or places, under the mere suspicion that forged stamps may