THE POST BETWEEN PARIS AND LONDON.
Jr may occasion some surprise that it should remain for the Morning Chronicle, at this day, to suggest such an acceleration of the public Post-office communication between London and Paris as should enable it to keep pace with private communica- tions. At present the reverse is the case, to a remarkable degree. The slowness of the post acts as a protection to certain private postmasters who carry on a brisk business ; and people whose affairs require a rapid interchange of letters depend on such pri- vate channels. The despatches for the newspapers are daily de- livered in London fifteen or even twenty hours before the letters transmitted through the Post-office. And from the more dilatory habits of the French Post-office, the case is yet worse in Paris; the letters which in London would be delivered early in the morn- ing being detained in the office till past noon. We are now speaking of the ordinary condition of things ; but occasionally the delay will be still greater—as when a Sunday intervenes. An instance occurred this week in our own expe- rience: a letter written in Paris on Thursday the 21st, quite in time to have been brought that night to London, but too late for the leisurely proceedings of the Post-office, reached us on Mon- day the 25th. We have before had reason to complain of the de- lays interposed by the bungling and espionage of the German post ; but here we find a nearer neighbour at fault, and our own office participating in the offence. The Chronicle announces that the South-eastern Railway Com- pany is alma to send a deputation to Paris, to consult with the Directors of The French Railway as to the mode of facilitating the communication between the two capitals. Of course the authorities of the two Post-offices will seek to be parties to the consultation. If a rapid post and two mails a day are necessary between London and Edinburgh, they are more necessary be- tween London and Paris; and it would be quite possible to have a transmission of letters posted and delivered within sixteen hours.
It should be remembered, that mere rapidity of transmission is not the only desideratum : it is most desirable that the letters of commercial men should be received at least as soon as those which reach any other class in the country ; and as to the Government, it ought to secure to itself absolute priority of information as a standing rule—not II keeping back the intelligence of private persons, but by outstripping it.
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