Her Majesty's Mails

For eight long years, the English people may be said to have enjoyed a complete monopoly in postage-stamps. Towards the close of 1848, they were introduced into France, and subsequently into every civilized nation in the world. Last year they even penetrated into the Ottoman Empire, and strange as it appears, when viewed in the light of Mohammedan usage, the Sultan has been prevailed upon to allow his portrait to appear on the new issues of Turkish stamps. In pursuance of a recommendation of a select committee of the House of Commons which sat in 1852, a perforating machine was purchased from Mr. Henry Archer, the inventor, for the sum of four thousand pounds.[177] The same committee could not decide, they said, on the "conflicting evidence" whether copper-plate engraving or surface printing would best secure the stamps against forgery, but they considered that the accurate perforation of the sheets would be a valuable preventive against forgery, "inasmuch as it would be exceedingly difficult to counterfeit sheets, and sheets badly done would at once excite suspicion when offered for sale." The invention of the perforating machine is said to have been attended with considerable labour, as, undoubtedly, it was by skill and ingenuity. To the Post-Office and the public the patent was sufficiently cheap. For a number of years the stamps had to be separated from each other by knives or scissors; now one stamp may be torn from the other with ease and safety. The process of puncturing the narrow spaces round each stamp--an undertaking not so easy as it seems--is the last the sheet of stamps undergoes before it is ready for sale.