British India Adhesive Stamps surcharged for Native States Part I - Chamba Faridkot Gwalior

· 1887 · Licence to be verified · archive.org ↗

2General Remarks.

3causes of « inverted L' for < T/ " " <B/ for 'B/ " " 'CP

4for < D/ " " f 8' for ' S V " F." for ' E * et hoc genu* omne.

5But a genuine collector despises such " deviations/' He also

6takes no interest in marginal stamps from a sheet which has

7been placed in the press a little to one side, so that part of the

8surcharge has come on the margin, and which derive their

9interest (?) merely from the fact that the margin has been

10torn off.

11Jt is genuine "errors" that we are now dealing with,

12caused by transposition of letters, wrong spelling, use of

13type from wrong founts, faulty spacing, &c. The late

14Bengal Philatelic Society, while recognising that these errors

15were not the result of malice or of gross negligence, thought

16that exercise of even greater care than had hitherto been

17bestowed might reasonably be expected, and that it should

18be possible to do away with mistakes in future altogether. It

19had the courage of its convictions, and one of its last official

20acts was to communicate its opinions on this matter to the

21Director-General of the Post Office of India, I am glad to

22be able to say that it has now definitely been arranged

23that the proof of the surcharge, after careful revision in

24the Press, will be finally examined and scrutinised in the

25office of the Director General, and that no stamps will

26be actually surcharged till the proof has been passed by that

27office. I think, therefore, that it may fairly be expected

28that the future will see no further " errors " among these

29stamps. This, of course, will have the effect of bringing

30about a finality, which should make the errors which have

31hitherto occurred particularly interesting, and this forms a

32large part of the justification for this book and for my

33claim that these stamps deserve study.

34One of the other points on which the late Bengal Society

35asked for reform was the stoppage of the issue of stamps of