UNDERST.AMPED LETTERS TO FRANCE. [To ME EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
you be so kind as to grant space for a protest from an English resident in France concerning the habit of so many English people understamping their letters to France? I have been passing the summer at Dinard, a resort frequented by large numbers of English visitors. At all the principal hotels (ten or a dozen) of this resort during August an average of from seven to eight francs has been disbursed every day on insufficiently stamped letters from England. Last winter the concierge of a large hotel at Cannes told me lie had paid out as much as forty francs in one day on improperly stamped corre- spondence from England. An English clergyman cites a case where he paid excess on an income-tax receipt, the sender of which was apparently under the impression that 0.H.M.S. alone was a substitute for foreign postage. A correspondent of the Continental Daily Mail calculates that at least 300,000 frs. is paid by English residents in and visitors to France on under- stamped correspondence every year. It would perhaps be a beneficial shock to the complacency of those who will not take the trouble to find out the correct postage for abroad if they could hear the comments of all those whose work is added to and complicated by this nuisance—not to mention the com- ments of the victims. The postage rate to France is 3d. On every letter from England stamped only with a lid. stamp the
recipient his to pay half a franc.—I am, Sir, &c., E. S. Brittany, September 8th.
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