Note 37 — Chapter IV

In France the number of receptacles for letters is nearly three times as great as in the United Kingdom. On the 1st of January, 1866, they were over 43,000, counting the receiver in each railway bureau ambulant as one. The staff of the French Post Office is also greatly in excess of that of the United Kingdom. On the 1st of January, 1866, the latter consisted of 25,082 persons, in which are included “rural messengers.” At the same date the French staff was 27,749, exclusive of 16,406 rural messengers. Total men, 44,155. The system of rural posts in France is of extreme interest. For the first thirty years of the present century, out of 38,000 communes 35,587 were without direct relations with the Post Office. To obtain a letter it was necessary to send, in many districts, distances varying from fifteen to twenty-five miles. By a law passed in May, 1829, every commune of the kingdom was to be afforded, from the 1st of April, 1839, postal communication, not less than every second day, with every other part of France. The service commenced with the appointment of 11,036 rural postmen, and the system has gradually extended to the employment of 16,406, for there is not at present a commune in France that has not a daily collection and delivery. “These 16,406 rural postmen,” says M. A. De Camp, in the Revue des deux Mondes, of January, 1867, “start every morning from 4,700 post offices. They travel through every commune, village, and hamlet, they convey correspondence to the most remote and to almost inaccessible houses and cottages. Every commune has, at its ‘Chef lieu,’ a letter-box, which is opened by the rural postman. The letters which he finds in it are delivered by him if they are addressed for any place in his walk; if not, they are conveyed by him to his post office, whence they are despatched every evening en route for their ultimate destinations.” So complete and penetrating is the system, that immediately after the annexation of Savoy, and of its Alpine regions, the rural postmen were installed, and now they present themselves daily at every habitation in the mountains, whenever there is a letter or even a newspaper to be delivered. “Let,” says a pleasant writer in a French periodical, “but an Englishman afflicted with ‘le splene,’ or any other man, but take up his permanent residence on the highest Alpine peak on French territory, it matters not Monte Rosa, Monte Cervino, or Monte Bianco, the rural postman of the mountain will be bound, if necessary, to visit him daily.”