I now come to the period of the active development of the idea, and so far from the stamp being a particular invention of the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, we must recognise that, beyond all controversy, the notion--whether for an impressed or an adhesive stamp is of little matter--was "in the air." It was stated before the Select Committee on Postage, on February 23, 1838, by a Mr. Louis, formerly Superintendent of Mails, that a plan for stamped covers was communicated to him "by Mr. Stead of Yarmouth, a gentleman who has interested himself a good deal about the Post Office."[1] The sheets of paper were to be stamped and sold to persons who would then be at liberty "to send their letters by conveyances not suitable to Post Office hours." The scheme had been proposed to the Post Office according to Mr. Louis in his evidence "many years ago," and it is attributed by some writers to 1829, though I can trace no source for their information as to this date. The plan, from the rather vague remembrance of the witness before the Committee, may have been simply one to introduce the Sardinian method of 1818 into this country, and in any case there are no concrete relics of Mr. Stead's ideas in the shape of essays. Mr. Charles Whiting, of the Beaufort House Press, entered the arena of postal reform some time prior to March, 1830, but we have no definite knowledge of his proposals previous to that date. In that year Mr. Whiting suggested the use of stamped bands for the prepayment of postage on printed matter.[2] Mr. Whiting called his stamped wrappers "Go frees," and he is understood to have intended the plan to extend to written matter, if it proved successful in an experimental trial with printed matter. The plan did not get a trial, and no greater success attended the efforts of Mr. Charles Knight, the celebrated publisher, who suggested stamped wrappers as a means of collecting postage on newspapers, subject to the abolition of the "Taxes on Knowledge," which were the occasion of a vigorous campaign set on foot in 1834. According to _Hansard_, a resolution was moved by Mr. Edward Lytton Bulwer, May 22, 1834, "that it is expedient to repeal the Stamp Duty on newspapers at the earliest possible period," and in the course of the debate the member for Hull, Mr. Matthew Davenport Hill, advocating the payment of a penny upon an unstamped newspaper sent by post, said: "To put an end to any objections that might be made as to the difficulty of collecting the money, he would adopt the suggestion of a person well qualified to give an opinion on the subject--he alluded to Mr. Knight, the publisher. That gentleman recommended that a stamped wrapper should be prepared for such newspapers as it was desired to send by post; and that each wrapper should be sold at the rate of a penny by the distributors of stamps in the same way as receipt stamps."[3]