Page:British India Adhesive Stamps Surcharged for Native States.djvu/15

4 causes of "inverted L' for 'T," " 'R' for 'B,' " " 'C' for 'D,' " " '8' for 'S', "F." for 'E " et hoc genus omne. But a genuine collector despises such "deviations." He also takes no interest in marginal stamps from a sheet which has been placed in the press a little to one side, so that part of the surcharge has come on the margin, and which derive their interest (?) merely from the fact that the margin has been torn off.

It is genuine "errors" that we are now dealing with, caused by transposition of letters, wrong spelling, use of type from wrong founts, faulty spacing, &c. The late Bengal Philatelic Society, while recognising that these errors were not the result of malice or of gross negligence, thought that exercise of even greater care than had hitherto been bestowed might reasonably be expected, and that it should be possible to do away with mistakes in future altogether. It had the courage of its convictions, and one of its last official acts was to communicate its opinions on this matter to the Director-General of the Post Office of India, I am glad to be able to say that it has now definitely been arranged that the proof of the surcharge, after careful revision in the Press, will be finally examined and scrutinised in the office of the Director General, and that no stamps will be actually surcharged till the proof has been passed by that office. I think, therefore, that it may fairly be expected that the future will see no further "errors" among these stamps. This, of course, will have the effect of bringing about a finality, which should make the errors which have hitherto occurred particularly interesting, and this forms a large part of the justification for this book and for my claim that these stamps deserve study.

One of the other points on which the late Bengal Society asked for reform was the stoppage of the issue of stamps of