The Sun.
London, England, 1853-06-29 00:00:00

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A UNIPORIII PENNY RECEIPT/2 !AMP.
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In accordance with a bill now before Parliament, an
.ortant change will be made, " from and after the sth
of. ," in the law affecting stamps for receipts and
draug4 s, or bills payable on demand- to bea'cr or to
order This arrangement will prove to be of thr greater
i ..ortance to the public at large, as well as to bankers
and the trading community generally, than at.first sif h;
is apparent; and, as there appears to be
,considerable
misunderstanding upon the subject, we propose to ex-
plain the operation of the new act in detail, as we
understand it.

Bnt, in the first place, we wish to ilisabuse the public
mind of an error in relation to the object 'of this bill
which seems very generally to prevail, so far as regards
the effect which it will have upon bankers! checks.
It is not intended to alter the law with regard to
checks as it now stands in any way whateier, though
no doubt it be found in practice that the extra-
ordinary facihties which the new law will furnish
will lead to a voluntary use of stamped checks to
a very great extent, in the way to which we shall
hereafter advert. According to the law as it now
stands, checks upon bankers payable to bearer may be
drawn upon bankers, provided they are drawn, not more
than ten miles from the place of business of such bankers,
upon plain or unstamped paper ; but, if drawn to
" order," or at a distance greater than ten miles from
such bankers, either to " order" or to " bearer;" they
are subject to the same stamp as a bill of 'exchange
drawn at a date not exceeding two months. Such is the
law as it stands at present ; nor is it intended in any
way to interfere with the existing privilege of drawing
checks payable to bearer on demand, and within ten
miles of the bank, on plain or unstamped paper.
The alterations contemplated are as follows :

1. In place of the present scale of receipt stamps, ris-
ing &Om 3d. for sums between 51. and la, up to 10s.,
a uniform stamp of Id. will be applicable to all sums, of
whatever amount, from 21. upwards. This uniform
penny stamp may be imprinted upon the paper, as at
present ; or, for greater convenience, a stamp similar to
a postage head will be furnished, which can be put on
the face of the paper, but so as to be written over by the
signature, and thus cancelled. In all cases the receivers
of money must, as at present, pay for the stamp ; and if
those making the payment furnish it, they will deduct it
from the sum to be paid.
2. In place of the present scale of stamps chargeable
upon bills or draughts payable to bearer on demand,
and drawn beyond the legal distarabapicl ujaQu-kil_
draughts payable' to ordet,' .i.rrny distance' Willatever,
rising from is. for amounts between 21. and-51. ss. to
255. for 3,0001., a uniform stamp of ld. will hencefor-
ward only be required.
The convenience to trade which will result from this
small uniform penny stamp is incalculable. Let us put
a few of the numerous ways in which it will be ap-
plicable, for the'sake of illustration.

In the first place, as regards the community at large,
it will furnish a remarkable facility for obtaining legal
receipts for every payment which they make. At
present private persons pay almost every account by
check ; but the trouble and expense of receipts are so
great, that not one in fifty payments is accompanied
by a legal discharge. The new regulations by which
the stamp is reduced to a uniform rate of one penny,
and by which stamps similar to postage heads can be
used in place of the ordinary stamped paper, would of
themselves be an enormous convenience, and would lead
to a universal practice of giving and taking receipts.
But the facilities thus afforded sink into insignificance
when we compare them with the convenience which will
result frcm the use of stamped checks. Let bankers
provide themselves with check-books as at present, but
each check bearing a penny stamp, and stitched in num-
bers
of 100, 200, or 300 each, charging to their cus-
tomers, as the act will provide, the sum of Bs. 4d.,
16s. Bd., and 255. respectively, according to the size of
the books required. The public, in making payments with
such checks, would then only require that the persons re-
ceiving them should endorse the name upon the back, and
with no more trouble than necessarily attache3 now to
writing a chcck a legal receipt, producible in a court
of law, will be furnished for every payment what-
ever ; and every person thus using stamped checks
would, when he had received his cancelled checks back
from his bankers', which is the almost universal prac-
tice, have in his possession a legal receipt for every pay-
ment made during the year. As the law provides that
the receiver of money shall pay the stamp, the person
making the payment by means of stamped checks would
in all cases deduct the value of the stamp from the sum
to be paid ; and thus, the banker having been reim-
bursed for the stamps by his customer, the customer, in
his turn, would be reimbursed by the persons to whom
lie made payments, on whom the cost of the stamps
would thus finally fall.
But the convenience will not end even here. As the
use of a penny stamp will be sufficient to secure a legal
receipt by an endorsement on the back of a check pay-
able to bearer, the same stamp will be sufficient for a
check or draught payable to order, which would have
the advantage that it could only be paid by the endorse-
ment of the person, either at the time of its being drawn
or at any other'time before payment, and which, if lost
or mislaid, could not be recovered by any other per-
son. Another very important advantage will attend
stamped checks payable to order. Such a cheek or
draught may be legally drawn at any distance from
the bank ; it may pass by endorsement from hand
to hand till it reaches the place of payment, which
would always be as direct as possible, tg`avokl the risk
.othalding overdaeeciteeke, And it mig,:ltrqh-Ti tte great-
est safety and with perfect legality be remitted to any
distance in payment of an account, with the certainty
that before it was presented for payment the receipt of
the person to whom it is sent will be attached in the
form of an endorsement.

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Thus, in point of fact, a banker's check with a penny
stamp, and payable to order, will have every privilege
and advantage which a bill at sight has at the present
time, including that of furnishing a valid and legal
receipt for the amount, no matter how great.
Let us now consider the practical facilities which this
change will furnish to bankers and traders generally.
As regards bankers, the high stamp duties charge-
able upon bills at sight may be said to have led to their
entire disuse, and to have introduced a system as clumsy
and inconvenient as it is possible to conceive. The plan
resorted to in order to evade the stamps at present is the
use of letters of credit, not transferable, and which en-
tail both upon the issuers of them, and especially upon
those on whom they are drawn, great trouble and incon-
venience. In future these will be entirely discontinued,
and bills on demand drawn instead upon a uniform
penny stamp, when the amount is above 2/. By this
means a bill payable to order, and transferable by en-
dorsement from hand to hand, will be furnished at the
`low cost of a penny stamp. This advantage will be felt
as much, if not more, in the trade between the various
inland towns of the kingdom, between which remittances
are made, as in their direct intercourse with 'London.
A shopkeeper in any village or market town, wishing
to make a remittance to some other distant local
town, will obtain a draught to order from his banker
upon London on a penny stamp, and the person to
whom he remits it, in however a remote a town in Eng-
land, Scotland, or Ireland, will be able to endorse it,
and receive the amount at once from his cwn banker,
who will remit it to London to his agent for collection.
At present this cannot be done except by the use of
expensive stamps. But it would be difficult to antici-
pate the numerous ways in which bankers will be able
to turn this facility to advantage.
But this change will prove of the greatest value to
merchants and wholesale traders. Just let us see to
what an advantage it may be turned in London. At
the present time the " crossing " of checks is relied upon
as a security in the numerous daily transactions in
the metropolis. Payments are made to collecting
clerks daily to the amount, probably, of millions, with
no other security than that which "crossing" checks
imparts ; and, unfortunately, the unsettled state of
the law in respect to this practice renders it of ex-
tremely doubtful utility. Let us suppose that checks
payable to order become of general use, legalised by the
penny stamp. In that case, the check could not be
paid without endorsement by the person in whose behalf
it is drawn. This would be a security to the person
paying the money as well as to the person on whose
account it is received ; and every person making such
payments would possess in his returned checks a legal
receipt for every payment, which could at any time
be produced in a court of law ; whereas, at present,
he, is without any legal means of proving his pay-
ments. And all this will be accomplished by the use of
checks with a penny stamp, which stamp he will be
entitled to deduct from the person receiving the pay-
ment.

Again, let us consider the convenience which this ar-
rangement will prove to traders in London having pay-
ments to make in various parts of the kingdom. By the
use of a penny stamp they will be able to remit their
own checks, payable to their correspondent or to his
order, who, by endorsement, will at once furnish a re-
ceipt, and obtain the amount from his own banker in
any part of the country, however remote, without charge.
There is, perhaps, one class in London who will adhere
to the present system of checks payble to bearer, and to
whom the use of the stamp will be of but little practical
use—we mean stockbrokers, billbrokers, and similar
traders, who deal in large sums more by way of transfer
than of payment, and to whom, therefore, the stamp
would he of little use. But if we are to look to the exten-
sive and various uses to which this new facility will be
extended, we are prepared to find that very soon all
bankers' checks, with unimportant exceptions, will be
stamped, and drawn to order instead of to bearer. If
drawn to o:der and stamped, they will answer all the
numerous purposes to which we have referred; they will
possess all the advantage of stamped cheeks drawn to
bearer, with the additional advantages of being much
mon; seclire, and of forming the best possible rieans of
remittance by post to any distance. And by tie plan
su7.geste I, all this convenifwle and safety will be ob-
tained without any charge to bankers or the payers of
money, while the receiver will pay only one penny in
each ea3e, in place of the presen .Icorrsiderable stamp
duty, the neglect to pay which exposes him to heavy
penalties.

DEATH OP E. W. W. PENDARVES, ESQ., M.P. POE
WEST CORNWALL.—We regret to have to announce the
death of this gentleman, which took piac) at four o'clock
on Sunday morning last, at his seat, near Camborne.
Mr. Pendarves has represented the county of Cornwall
in Parliament uninterruptedly for the last 27 years.
The names'of two gentlemen are already mentioned as
being likely to offer themselves for the vacancy in the
representation of the county occasioned by the death of
Mr. Pendarves, those of Mr. Michael Willyams and Mr.
Tremayne, two gentlemen well known in the county.—
, Plymouth Mail.