Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/602

Rh 580 P O S T-O F F I C E [FRANCE. agents.&quot; Mr Hatton in his first report as postmaster-general, that for 1884, is silent upon this subject. Savings Mr Creswell took occasion in 1871 to recommend also the estab- bankst lishment of postal savings banks in the United States, and this subject he made of peculiar interest at the time by the sugges tion that the money needed to purchase existing telegraph lines could be raised through the postal savings banks, certainly a timely suggestion to accompany the two simultaneous recommendations. The establishment of postal savings banks has also been the fre quent subject of departmental and congressional discussion without decisive action. The utility and expediency of the measure have not been doubted, but singularly enough what has seemed to be an insuperable obstacle to the inauguration of the system has been encountered. The policy of the Government, with its vast surplus revenue of late years, has been to gradually and surely reduce the national debt, which, it would seem from the progress already made in that direction, is certain of ultimate extinction in the course of a few years. It is plain, however, although the difficulty does not seem to have occurred to many of the advocates in the United States of a savings banks system, that to be lasting it must be founded upon a permanent Government debt, a condition which does not and is not likely to exist in that country. Interest cannot be paid to depositors for funds which are not needed and which cannot be pro fitably employed. Until this problem is solved, it is not probable that this feature will be added to the postal system of the United States, where, however, the practice of careful economy has not yet become a common habit of the masses of the people, and where the security for small savings afforded by Government institutions would tend to foster habits of thrift. A Bill to establish a postal savings depository as a branch of the post-office department was introduced in the House of Representatives on 8th February 1882, and an elaborate report was made thereon, 21st February 1882, by the committee on the post-office and post-roads, to whom the Bill had been referred. The measure was never acted upon and has not since been revived. (W. B. C*.) FRANCE. Early The French postal system was founded by Louis XI. history. (19th June 1464), was largely extended by Charles IX. (1565), and received considerable improvements at various periods under the respective Governments of Henry IV. and Louis XIII. (1603, 1622, 1627 sq.). 1 In the year last-named (1627) France, so often during long ages pre eminent in &quot;teaching the nations how to live,&quot; originated a postal money-transmission system, expressly prefaced by those cautions about transmission of coin in ordinary letters which are now familiar to all eyes in the windows of English post-offices (but which no eyes saw there a dozen years ago), and in the same year it established a system of cheap registration for letters. The * postmaster who thus anticipated 19th-century improvements was Pierre d Almeras, a man of high birth, who gave about 20,000 (of modern money) for the privilege of serving the public. The turmoils of the Fronde wrecked much that he had achieved. The first farm of postal income was made in 1672, and by farmers it was administered until June 1790. To increase the income postmasterships for a long time were not only sold but made hereditary. Many adminis trative improvements of detail were introduced, indeed, by Mazarin (1643), by Louvois (c. 1680 sq.), and by Cardinal de Fleury (1728) ; but many formidable abuses also continued to subsist. The revolutionary Government transferred rather than removed them. Characteristically, it put a board of postmasters in room of a farming post master-general and a controlling one. The keen and far-seeing mind of Napoleon (during the consulate 2 ) abol ished the board, recommitted the business to a postmaster- general as it had been under Louis XIII., and greatly improved the details of the service : Napoleon s organiza tion of 1802 is, in substance, that which obtains in 1885, although, of course, large modifications and developments have been made from time to time. 3 1 For the details, see Ency. Brit., 8th ed., vol. xviii. pp. 420-424, and Maxime Du Camp, &quot; L 1 Administration des Postes,&quot; in Revue des Deux Momles (1865), ser. 2, Ixvii. 169 sq. 2 28 Pluviose, an XII. = 18th February 1804. 3 Le Quien de la Neufville, Usages des Postes, 1730, pp. 59-67, 80, 121-123, 147-149, 286-291; Maxime Du Camp, op. cit., passim; Pierre The university of Paris, as early as the 13th century, possessed a special postal system, for the abolition of which in the 18th it received a large compensation. But it continued to possess certain minor postal privileges until the Revolution. 4 Mazarin s edict of 3d December 1643 shows that France Grow at that date had a parcel post as well as a letter post. That edict creates for each head post-office throughout the kingdom three several officers styled respectively (1) comptroller, (2) weigher, (3) assessor ; and, instead of remunerating them by salary, it directs the addition of one-fourth to the existing letter rate and parcel rate, and the division of the surcharge between the three. Fleury s edicts of 1728 make sub-postmasters directly responsible for the loss of letters or parcels ; they also make it necessary that senders should post their letters at an office, and not give them to the carriers, and regulate the book-post by directing that book parcels (whether MS. or printed) shall be open at the ends. 5 In 1758, almost eighty years after Dockwra s establishment of a penny post in London, an historian of that city published an account of it, which in Paris came under the eye of a man of similar spirit and enterprise to Dockwra. Claude Piarron de Chamousset 6 obtained letters-patent to do the like, and, before setting to work or seeking profit for himself, he issued a tract with the title, Memoire sur la petite-poste etablie a Lo?idres, sur la modele de laquelle on pourra.it en etablir de semblalles dans les plus grandes villes d 1 Europe. The reform so worthily begun was successfully carried out. By this time the general post-office of France was pro ducing a considerable and growing revenue. In 1676 the farmers had paid to the king 48,000 in the money of that day. A century later they paid a fixed rent of 352,000, and covenanted to pay in addition one-fifth of their nett profits. In 1788 the date of the last letting to farm of the postal revenue the fixed and the variable payments were commuted for one settled sum of 480,000 a year. The result of the devastations of the Revolution and of the wars of the empire together is shown strikingly by the fact that in 1814 the gross income of the post-office was but little more than three-fifths of the nett income in 1788. Six years of the peaceful government of Louis XVIII. raised the gross annual revenue to 928,000. On the eve of the revolution of 1830 it reached 1,348,000. Towards the close of the next reign the post-office yielded 2,100,000 (gross). Under the revolutionary Govern ment of 1848-49 it declined again (falling in 1850 to 1,744,000) ; under that of Napoleon III. it rose steadily and uniformly with every year. In 1858 the gross re venue was 2,296,000, in 1868 3,596,000. The most important postal reforms in France (other than those which we have already noticed) are briefly these : (1) the extension of postal facilities to all the communes of the country, effected under Charles X., placing the France of 1829 in certain postal particulars in advance of the United States of 1879 ; (2) the adoption of postage Clement, Appreciation des Consequences de la Reforme postale, passim; Loret, Gazette rimee, 16th August 1653 ; Furetiere, Le Roman Bour geois (in Du Camp, ut supra] ; &quot;Die ersten Posteinrichtungen, u.s.w.,&quot; in L Union Postale, viii. 138 ; Ordonnances des Rois de France, as cited by A. de Rothschild, Histoirede la Poste-aux-Lettres, i. 171, 216, 269 (3ded., 1876). We quote M. de Rothschild s clever book with some misgivings. It is eminently sparkling in style, and most read able ; but its citations are so given that one is constantly in doubt lest they be given at second or even at third hand instead of from the sources. The essay of M. Du Camp is, up to its date, far more trust worthy. He approaches his subject as a publicist, M. de Rothschild as a stamp-collector. 4 There are several charters confirmatory of this original privilege. The earliest of these is of 1296 (Philip &quot; the Fair &quot;). 5 Ordonnances, &e., as above. 6 There is an interesting biographical notice of Piarron de Chamousset in Le Journal Offidel of 5th July 1875.