So far from being “in common use,” the envelope or cover was the outcome of an aristocratic monopoly granted, as we have seen in a previous chapter, to M. de Valayer, who, “under royal approbation” set up “'a private' [penny?][151] post, placing boxes at the corners of the streets for the reception of letters wrapped up in envelopes which were to be bought at offices established for that purpose.”[1] To M. de Valayer, therefore, would seem to belong priority of invention of the street letter-box, and perhaps of the impressed stamp and envelope; although evidence to prove that the boon was intended for public use seems to be wanting. In the days of Louis XIV. how many of the “common”alty were able to make use of the post? M. de Valayer also devised printed forms of “billets,” prepaid, and a facsimile of one is given in the _Quarterly Review's_ article.[152] Like our own present-day postcards, one side of the billet was to be used for the address, the other for correspondence; but the billet was a sheet of paper longer than our postcard, and no doubt it was folded up—the address, of course, showing—before being posted. There is no trace on the facsimile of an adhesive stamp. Neither is mention made of any invention or use of such stamp in France or elsewhere in the year 1670, although some seeker after philatelist mare's-nests a while since read into the article aforesaid fiction of that sort. (2) “Stamped postal letter paper (_carta postale bollata_) was issued to the public by the Government of the Sardinian States in November 1818; and stamped postal envelopes were issued by the same Government from 1820 till 1836.” There was no such issue “to the public.” For the purpose of collecting postal duties, “stamped paper or covers of several values, both with embossed and with impressed stamps, appear to have been used in the kingdom of Sardinia about the year 1819.”[153] The use of these stamped covers, etc., was almost entirely limited to one small class of the community, namely the Ministers of State, and was in force from about 1819 to 1821 only. “In March 1836, a formal decree was passed suppressing their further use, the decree being required simply to demonetise a large stock found unused in the Stamp Office at Turin.”[1] The Sardinian experiment, like the earlier one of M. de Valayer in Paris, had but a brief existence, the cause of failure in both cases being apparently attributable to the absence of uniformity of rate. (3) “Stamped wrappers for newspapers were made experimentally in London by Mr Charles Whiting, under the name of 'go-frees,' in 1830.”