It would not serve any purpose useful to the present subject to trace to its beginnings the use of stamped paper for the collection of Government revenues; but it is highly interesting to disentangle from the web of history the facts which show this system to have been recognised as applicable to the collection of postages by the prototypes of the reformers of 1840. The first known instance of special printed wrappers being sold for the convenience of users of a postal organisation occurred in Paris in 1653. At this time France had its General Post, just as England about the same time had set up a General Letter Office in the City of London; but in neither case did the General Post handle local letters. To despatch a letter to the country from Paris, or from London, there was no choice but to deliver it personally, or send it by private messenger, to the one solitary repository in either city for the conveyance of correspondence by the Government post. The porters of London found no small part of the exercise of their trade in carrying letters to the General Letter Office, and in Paris, no doubt, a similar class of men enjoyed the benefit of catering at individual rates for what is now done on the vast co-operative plan of the State monopoly. In 1653, a Frenchman, M. de Villayer, afterwards Comte de Villayer, set up as a private enterprise (but with royal authority) the _petite poste_ in Paris, which had for its _raison d'être_ the carrying of letters to the General Post, and also the delivery of local letters within the city. He distributed letter-boxes at prominent positions in the chief thoroughfares in Paris, into which his customers could drop their letters and from whence his _laquais_ could collect them at regular intervals. At certain appointed places M. de Villayer placed on sale letter-covers, or wrappers, which bore a _marque particulier_, and which, being sold at the rate of a penny each (two _sous_), were permitted to frank any letter deposited in the numerous letter-boxes of the Villayer post to any point within the city. The post is the one afterwards referred to by Voltaire as the "two-_sous_ post." These wrappers, then, were the first printed franks for the collection of postage from the public. The exact nature of the matter imprinted upon them is uncertain; but it probably included M. de Villayer's coat of arms, and it was on this hypothesis that the late M. Maury, the French philatelist, reconstructed an approximate imitation of the original form of cover. The covers, it should be stated, were wrapped around the letters by the senders, and were then dropped in the boxes. In the process of sorting for delivery, the servants of M. de Villayer removed the special cover, which removal was practically the equivalent of the cancellation of the stamps of to-day.