Page:The Post Office of Fifty Years Ago.djvu/30

 To many of the present generation, especially to those who are afflicted with the mania for collecting postage-stamps, it will doubtless be interesting to read the earliest propositions for their adoption. Stamped envelopes, for prepayment of postage, are said to have been in use in Paris as far back as the year 1653, but they seem soon to have fallen into disuse, possibly because prepayment of postage was then, in France, as contrary to long-established custom as in 1837 it was in this country, and no advantage by way of reduced postage appears to have been offered to secure prepayment. At all events, their existence had long been forgotten, and was certainly unknown to Mr. Charles Knight, the eminent publisher, who about the year 1834 revived the idea, by proposing that stamped wrappers should be employed as a substitute for the impressed newspaper stamp, as is explained in Sir Rowland Hill's pamphlet.

Mr. Charles Knight's valuable idea, modified by Sir Rowland Hill's happy suggestion (given in his evidence before the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry on 13th of February, 1837 of making the stamp adhesive "by using a bit of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, and covered at the back with a glutinous wash, which . . . by applying a little moisture," might be attached to the letter, was