With regard to the other processes, little is known out of the Stamp-Office, beyond what may be gathered from a close inspection of the postage-stamps themselves. For obvious reasons, it has never been thought desirable to publish any account of the manufacture of stamps. We may simply say that all English postage-labels are manufactured at Somerset House, and the entire establishment, which is distinct from the other branches of the Inland Revenue Department, is managed at the annual expense of thirty thousand pounds.[178] Of this sum, nineteen thousand pounds is the estimated cost for the present year, 1863-1864, of paper for labels and envelopes, and for printing, gumming, and folding. About five thousands pounds will be necessary to pay the salaries of the various officers, including five hundred pounds to the supervisor, and one hundred pounds to the superintendent of the perforating process. Mr. Edwin Hill, a brother of Sir Rowland Hill, is at the head of the department. A large number of boys are employed at the machines, under the superintendence of three or four intelligent superintendents. The paper used for the stamps is of a peculiar make, each sheet having a water-mark of two hundred and forty crowns; the blocks used are of first-rate quality, and only subjected to a certain number of impressions. The blocks are inked with rollers as in letter-press printing. Of course, the stamps are printed in sheets, though each one is struck with the same die or punch. After the printing, and before the sheets are perforated, they are covered on the back with a gelatine matter to render the label adhesive. Great precaution is taken in the printing of the stamps to provide against forgery. All the lines and marks, as well as the initial letters in the corner, are arranged so as to make the whole affair inimitable. The best preservative, however, in our opinion, against a spurious article, is the arrangement under which stamps are sold. Only obtainable in any large quantity from the Stamp or Post-Offices, any attempt on the part of the forger to put a base article into circulation is encumbered with difficulties. Stamps, while they do duty for coin, are used almost exclusively for small transactions, and generally among people well known to each other. Other precautions are nevertheless very necessary; and besides the initial letters on each stamp--different in every one of the two hundred and forty in the sheet--which are regarded as so many checks on the forger, this pest to society would have to engrave his own die, and cast his own blocks, and find a drilling-machine, perhaps the most difficult undertaking of all. The paper, besides, would be a considerable obstacle, and not less so the ink, for that used in this manufacture differs from ordinary printer's ink, not merely in colour, but in being soluble in water.