Stamps, impressed and adhesive, are extensively used for making and verifying payments of money. Stamp-duties were first imposed in England in 1694; the basis of the existing law is the Stamp Act of 1870; see Griffith's Digest of the Stamp Duties (9th ed. 1888). For the protection of the public revenue penalties are imposed; thus any person receiving a premium of insurance without issuing a properly stamped policy is liable to a fine. Where the law requires a stamp, an unstamped document cannot be given in evidence in civil proceedings unless the party producing it is willing to pay the duty and an additional penalty. Stamp-duties are a form of indirect taxation. It is admitted that they ought to be moderate in amount; excessive duties on negotiable instruments, transfers of property, or legal proceedings would operate to the discouragement of business. The amount of the stamp-duties received in the United Kingdom has risen from £6,726,817 in 1840 to £8,040,091 in 1859-60, £11,306,914 in 1879-80, and £13,460,000 in 1890-91. See Tilsley, Stamp Laws. During the American civil war (1861-65) stamp-taxes were laid on all manner of legal documents, bank drafts, cheques, and on the packages of various kinds of manufactured goods, but these were gradually withdrawn. The last stamp-taxes on matches, proprietary articles, playing cards, bank cheques and drafts were repealed in 1883; and the revenue from adhesive stamps, which was 4,140,175 in 1863, rose to 16,544,043 in 1870, and was $7,053,053 in the last year, vanished from the internal revenue returns. Forgery (q.v.) of stamps is severely punished.
Stamps for postal purposes were used, or were proposed to be used, in Paris as far back as 1653. Stamped paper or covers, both with impressed and embossed stamps, were used for official correspondence in the kingdom of Sardinia in 1819-21, several values being provided for. Mr Charles Knight suggested stamped covers for the prepayment of newspaper postage in 1833-34. Stamps or labels, to be gummed or pasted on articles liable to duty, have been in use by the British Revenue authorities ever since 1802, though prior to 1840 they were not issued ready gummed. The use, for postal purposes, of a piece of paper just large enough to bear the stamp, with a glutinous wash on the back rendered adhesive by moisture, was recommended by Sir Rowland Hill (q.v.) as part of his scheme of uniform rates of postage, combined with prepayment, in his pamphlet on post-office reform in February 1837.
Not till after the death of Sir Rowland Hill in 1879 was it disputed that the credit of the adhesive postage-stamp was due to him; though in 1846 Mr James Chalmers, a bookseller of Dundee, received a testimonial from his fellow-citizens for the post-office reforms advocated by him, including the use of adhesive stamps; but from 1879 onwards till 1891 a pamphlet controversy was carried on by Mr Patrick Chalmers, insisting that the credit was wholly due to his father. The idea, it was affirmed, was fully developed as early as 1834. Specimen stamps were, it was said, made and exhibited in that or the next year on Mr Chalmers's premises, who submitted his plan to the Treasury in 1839, which was then, but not before, taken up by Sir Rowland Hill. This, however, was denied by Mr Pearson Hill (Sir Rowland's son). Mr Hill read an elaborate statement on the subject before the London Philatelic Society in November 1881, pointing out that while the use of adhesive stamps was proposed by Sir R. Hill in February 1837, Mr James Chalmers's own letters, still preserved, give November 1837 as the date at which he first put forward his scheme, and that when in 1840 Mr J. Chalmers's attention was called to Sir R. Hill's proposals of February 1837, he at once abandoned his claim to priority. The Philatelic Society decided that Mr P. Chalmers had failed to produce any evidence that Sir Rowland Hill had derived the idea from Mr James Chalmers. Both seem to have hit on the plan independently: but the use of adhesive postage-stamps without uniform postal rates, and at a time when the practice of sending letters unpaid was almost universal, would obviously have been impossible. Sir Rowland's reform of 1840 for the first time made the use of postage-stamps practicable. Mr Pearson Hill's case was published as a pamphlet (The Origin of Postage Stamps) in 1888. Mr Chalmers also issued pamphlets with testimonies from two or three old persons who, doubtless unaware of Mr James Chalmers's own written statements, professed to remember that his suggestion of adhesive stamps was made as early as 1834; but no contemporary documents to certify the early date were produced.
With the postal reform of 1840 the Franking (q.v.) of letters was abolished in the United Kingdom, and postage-stamps introduced. The first English postage-stamp (issued on 6th May 1840) was black. The famous 'Mulready envelope,' issued at the same time, and intended to be both cover and stamp, was not a practical success, and was withdrawn the same year. Since then upwards of 100 postage-stamps of various designs or values have been used in the United Kingdom: in the British empire (with colonies) upwards of 1600 different postage-stamps are or have been in use. The red penny stamp in use in Great Britain from 1841 to 1880 underwent some hundred and fifty minor modifications, of which in each sheet there would be 240 varieties, so that for stamp-collectors Britain itself presents a large field.
Stamp-collecting began to be a common and fashionable hobby about 1861, which spread from Britain to the Continent; and in 1890 there were three collections of postage-stamps of all kinds of which the aggregate value was estimated at more than £100,000. The stamp-collecting pursuit is called philately, timbrophily, and timbrogly; and there are numerous philatelic societies at home and abroad which publish transactions or journals. Rare stamps bring high prices. The Mulready penny envelope unused is worth about 15s.; a stamp of the first Sandwich Islands issue of 1852 about £65; and two of Mauritius of 1847 have been sold for £680.
See works on stamps or stamp-collecting by Philbrick and Westoby (1881), Evans (1885), Ogilvy (1883), Booty, Hardy, and Bacon (1898). See also RECEIPT.