"The amount of matter sent through the mails free is very large, adding greatly to our expenditures and giving us no revenue. The Franking Privilege has been restored to the members and chief officers of Congress, so as to allow them to send free almost anything which they were ever allowed to transmit through the mails free, except letters. Tons upon tons of books, documents, seeds, shrubs and the like are placed in our mails free of cost, on this score. The official letters of the Executive Departments of the general Government, their documents, etc., go free through the mails." The operation of the act of 1879, however, greatly increased the amount of free matter, and decreased the use of official stamps. The Post Office Department discontinued their use entirely. In a circular dated, Washington, D. C., April 22nd, 1879, and signed by A. D. Hazen, third assistant Postmaster General, it is stated that: "The Department will begin the issue on May 1st next, of envelopes for official business which will secure the free transmission through the mails of all official matter and which are intended to supercede the Post Office envelopes now in use, as well as official postage stamps and official stamped envelopes. Accordingly the issue of official stamps and official stamped envelopes will be discontinued on and after the date named. * * * The stock of post office envelopes now in the hands of postmasters will continue until exhausted to be used as heretofore by the attachment of official postage stamps. So also official stamped envelopes now in the hands of postmasters at Presidential offices will be used as heretofore until exhausted." This circular, of course, applies only to stamps, etc., of the Post Office Department. The other Departments continued to use them for certain purposes, though none were issued to the Executive Department. The report of the Postmaster General for the year ending June 30th, 1885, says: "The use of official stamps and stamped envelopes was wholly discontinued by this Department and substantially so by the other Departments on the 30th of June, 1879, under the Act authorizing the use of official penalty envelopes." By the Act of the XLVIIIth Congress, Session I, Chapter 234, Section 3, approved July 5, 1884, the provisions of the Act of 1879, were substantially re-enacted with the addition that any Department or officer authorized to use the penalty envelopes, might enclose them to any person from whom an answer was requested, and might register any letter required by law, or the regulations to be registered free, and might receive any letter partly paid free, and added that: "Section 3915 of the Revised Statutes of the United States so far as the same relates to stamps and stamped envelopes for official purposes is hereby repealed."