Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/608

Rh 586 POST-OFFICE [POSTAGE STAMPS. cases.&quot; 1 Mulready s well -remembered allegorical cover came into use on 1st May 1840, together with the first form of the stamped letter-paper, and the adhesive labels. 2 They all met at first, but only for a few days, with a large sale. That of the first day yielded 2500. Soon after wards the public rejection of the &quot; Mulready envelope,&quot; writes Rowland Hill, &quot; was so complete as to necessitate the destruction of nearly all the vast number prepared for issue.&quot; Whilst, on the other hand, the presses of the stamp-office were producing more than half a million of [adhesive] labels, by working both night and day, they Mann- yet failed to meet the demand.&quot; 3 It was only after many factureof we eks, and after the introduction of a series of mechanical im P s - improvements and new processes, due to the skill and ingenuity, in part of Mr Edwin Hill of the stamp-office, in part of Mr Perkins, an engraver, that the demand could be effectually answered. To find an obliterating ink which worked effectually, without damaging the letters, was also a special difficulty. In the production of the stamps both cheapness and security against forgery had to be combined. &quot; The queen s head was first engraved on a single matrix, the effigy being encompassed with lines too fine for any. . . but the most delicate machinery to engrave. The matrix, being subse quently hardened, was employed to produce impressions on a soft steel roller of sufficient circumference to receive twelve, and this, being hardened in turn, was used under very heavy pressure to produce and repeat its counterpart on a steel plate,&quot; 1 capable of working off, at each impres sion, 240 stamps. Engravers, printers, chemists, and arti ficers of several kinds had to combine their efforts before the desired results could be secured. Long afterwards (June 1856) a question was raised in the House of Com mons as to an alleged preference of one manufacturing firm over all its virtual competitors without preliminary inquiry or actual competition. The operation, it was replied, was confided to Messrs De La Rue & Co., because they &quot;had the best means of accomplishing it (i.e., the production of the adhesive stamp) within the time required. No public notice calling for tenders for printing and gumming was given to the trade, nor is there any trade to which such notice could have been given, the operation being the making of the stamps, as well as the printing and gum ming, and that operation being to a great extent experi mental.&quot; 5 The total cost of the manufacture of each million of stamps was 30, Os. lid. (viz., paper, 5, 14s. 5d. ; print ing and gumming, 22, Is. 9d. ; perforating, 6 1, 8s. Id. ; salaries, 16s. 8d). To this is to be added a sum of 45, 2s. 4d. for poundage and commission upon the sale, making in all 75, 3s. 3d., the whole of which forms a deduction from the produce of sale. In the event about three thousand millions of stamps were produced from the original matrix. At the end of fifteen years a second matrix was obtained, after the deepening of the lines by hand, from the first. From 1st May 1840 up to the end of the year 1884 more than thirty-one thousand three hundred millions of postage stamps had been printed, 1 &quot; History of Penny Postage &quot; (Life, i. 345, 346). 2 &quot; Considerable diversion was created in the city to-day [1st May 1840] by the appearance of the new penny-post devices for envelopes, half -sheet letters, and bits of sticking-plaster for dabbing on to letters. . . . [The elephants on the Mulready cover] are sym bolic of the lightness and rapidity with which Mr Rowland Hill s penny-post is to be carried on. ... Withal the citizens are rude enough to believe that these graphic embellishments will not go down at the price of Is. 3d. per dozen for the envelopes,. . . and of Is. Id. per dozen for the. . . sticking-plaster.&quot; This good-humoured banter is from the money article of an eminent daily paper. 3 Hill, ut supra, p. 398. 4 Sir R. Hill, op, cit., p. 407. 8 Returns relating to Stamped Postal Envelopes, &c., 24th July 1856, House of Commons Papers, No. 392. 6 This item only after the year 1853. varying in value from 5 to a halfpenny. The details are as follows (Table XXIV.) : Adhesive stamps at 5 . 1 84 000 1 285,054 lO.s 461 438 5s 6 413 686 2s. 6d 789,884 2s . 1 6,715 820 Is .. I 225,378 060 10d ! 5 963 476 9d 11,235,080 8d .. 1 4,608,720 6d 1 217 048 960 5d .. I 26,413,680 4d 175,221,180 3d .. i 223,381,000 2Ad. . i 284,475,696 2d 385,171,080 ld 105,603,360 Id . ! 26 651,930 040 id 2,970,705,120 Total number... 31,301,885,334 The first contract for the ordinary stamped envelope, Stamp* with the embossed queen s head, was entered into with envel - Messrs Dickinson & Longman on 22d May 1840. TheP es&amp;gt; average cost of each million of this envelope was 376 ; of which sum 359, 6s. was repaid by the produce of its sale, over and above the value of the stamp, leaving a nett deduction from the aggregate value of 16, 14s. upon each million sold. 7 In November 1850 a second contract was entered into with Messrs De La Rue & Co., the contractors for the adhesive stamp. In the ten years 1847 to 1856 inclusive the aggregate number of envelopes manufactured and sold was 186,124,000. Under both these contracts the outside of the envelope was impressed with a coloured embossed device in the place of a seal. 8 And this small device the cost of which was infinitesimal whilst it obviously improved the appearance of the envelope, added still more to its security. Of late years the device has been omitted, and the security of letters impaired for a very contemptible saving. The little canton of Zurich was the first foreign state Intro- to adopt postage stamps, in 1843. The stamps reached tluctio America in the same year, being introduced by the Govern- ] ment of Brazil. That of the United States did not adopt gt them until 1847 ; but a tentative issue was made by the post-office of New York in 1845. An adhesive stamp was also issued at St Louis in the same year, and in Rhode Island in the next. In Europe the Swiss cantons of Geneva (1844) and of Basel (1845) soon followed the ex ample set by Zurich. 9 In the Russian empire the use of postage stamps became general in 1848 (after preliminary issues at St Petersburg and in Finland in 1845). France issued them in 1849. 10 The same year witnessed their 7 This great difference of the deduction from the postal revenue accruing from the nett produce of stamped envelopes of only 16, 14s. upon each million sold, as against 75, 3s. upon each million of the labels, may well have weighed much with Sir Rowland Hill in his long preference for stamped covers to adhesive labels. If the 23,415 millions of adhesives sold up to 1879 could have been sold in the form of envelopes the gain to the revenue would have been more than 1,358,070. Besides, the security of the cover is greater. 8 Return, &c., as above (Sessional Paper of 1856, No. 392, p. 8). 9 On the whole, within the course of seven years the postage stamp was adopted in three Swiss cantons, throughout the United States, in Russia, and in Brazil. So curiously inexact is the statement which appears in Mr Lewin s volume one in many respects of eminent ability entitled Her Majesty s Mails, p. 261 : &quot;For eight long years the English people may be said to have enjoyed a complete monopoly in postage stamps.&quot; It is still more curious to observe in Sir Rowland Hill s own &quot;History of Penny Postage&quot; (Life, &c., ii. 13) this passage: &quot;It is remarkable. . . that the first countries to adopt the improvement Spain and Russia should be two so far from taking a general lead in civilization.&quot; 10 The date of the law authorizing the introduction is 30th August 1848. It became operative on 1st January 1849.