The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1826-09-09 00:00:00

LETTER
FROM THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF STAMPS,
TO THE RIWIT HON. THOMAS WALLACE.

Sta—ln thel3th and I ith Reports of the Commission of Inquiry,
of which you ate Chairman, my name is made to receive a most
marked and invidious distinction. lam even pursued with such a
spirit of criminsting research, that many, who have read the Re.
ports impartially, have been induced to suspect that there must be
some latent grounds of hostility towards me prvoieely. The ma-
terials arc amply before me, to show that this suspicion is borne
out by the fact. I shall proceed to lay my testimony in proof of
this before the public, and leave it to produce its own cif:T..
I will set out not merely with admitting, hut insisting, that every
man who, clothed with the requisite authority, exerts himself faith.
fully and fearlessly in putting down abuses, and who sets the seal
of reprobation upon those by whom such abuses arc upheld, de-
serves well of his country, and enti•lts himself to the respect and
applause of every honest man. If, Sir, after the facts which I
shall have adduced, you shall be found to have deserved this ho-
nourable sanction as your reward, Cod forbid that I should at.
tempt to withdraw one iota from your claim ; and if. on my part,
I shall fairly justify my own humble pretenslons, I trust that, in
justice, I shall be allowed to put in for try share (if the same equi.
table recompense. After the reflections and insinuations against
tne, direct and indirect, with which you preface your Report, and
which you give forth to the world as the condensed result of your
inquiries, I hope I shall be forgiven if I ntivvrt a little to my own
merits. lam the last man who would willingly be the herald of
his own deserving; it is what I never should have done from choice,
but you have forced it upon me as a duty. I have ever felt reluc.
tant in bringing my name before the public : I have no ambition
that way. I hate always, hitherto, contented myself with the
conscientious and straight-forward discharge of my public duty,
without seeking to proclaim either the Labour of my exertions, or
the result of them.

It may seem extraordinary that I should hold this languarre of
self-approval to you, and this too in the very face of a Report
emanating from yourself, extracts from which are circulating
through every public Jr luta', to the uttermost corners of the
kingdom. But I shall not come into Court without my vouchers,
and I pledge myself to verify them, or I ant content that they shall
go for nothing. I affirm, then, that the whole of my official life,
both as Chairman of the Excise Board in Scotland, and, since then,
as Chairman of the Board of Stamps in England, has been, more or
less, employed—first, in striving to put down abuses ; and, next, in
bearing up against the machinations which, to this day, have baffled
all my Sorts to remove them. I had not been many months ap-
pointed to the Stamp Board in England. when the Lords of the
Treasury,desirous of improving the Stamp Revenue in Scotland, ap-
pointed me, under their special warrant, to inquire into the system
of management which prevailed in that part of United Kingdom.
and to report to their Lordships the result of my inquiries. Both
Lord Liver;utol and Lord Retley (thee Chancsllor of the Exche-
quer), in the interviews I had with them previous to my departure
for Scotland, expressed their most earnest desire to enrolee whatever
measures might be found necessary to rectify any abuses which
might be found to prevail there. It is therefore quite superfluous
for me to add, that, when I speak of the counteraction by which
my efforts to discharge the trust which the Lords of his Majesty's
Treasury reposed in me was defeated, tio p.irt of that counter-
action emanated from them—l speak this with the exception of
Lord Granville Somerset. I do not state this, Sir, for your infor-
mation : you well know by what over-ruling influence I was from
! first to last opposed, and through whom 1.11 my effbrts to remove
Mr. Bremner, the Solicitor of Stamps in E :inburgh, the chief
agent in that shameless sys em of iniquity which i de:eloped, was
frustrated and brought to nought.
When I arrived at Edinburgh, the condition in which I found the
stamp department will appear from the following letters, which
I wrote at the time to my colleague, Mr. Btnilley ; I had kept no
copies of these letters, which were penned on the spu r of the occasion,
nor would they ever have come again to my possession but for the
circumstance of his executors having, after his death, found them
among his papers, and, seeing their contents, very obligingly for-
warded them to me. It is easily seen, fton the friendly unofficial
style of confidential intercourse in which they are wri:ten, that
they never were intended for the public eye; they ■re, however,
the basis of the Reports which l eterwards forwarded in official
form to the Treasury ; and I do not hesitate to call for the candid
and sober judgment of the p:blic upon them, es contrasted with
the charge of official in:Effie-trice to nt:- public duty which your
Report takes so much and suet inc msant pains to fix upon me.