Stamp-Laws. These are laws enacted with a view to provide a revenue to the Crown, by requiring that all contracts, bills of exchange, bonds, deeds, and many other writings of a similar nature, should be written upon stamped paper, a duty being payable to the Crown on every stamp. The stamp-laws, in addition to serving the purpose for which they were enacted, have been of considerable use in checking fraud, and rendering forgery difficult, and supplying means of detecting the one or the other.