About this time I began to experience somewhat of that kind of annoyance which my own proceedings during the last two years and a-half must have produced to the Post Office authorities, and in some measure to the Government of the day. I was now myself, in some sort, within the pale, and I began to find that through my difference of position there was a decided change in the sound produced by a knocking at the outer gate. Suggestions for improvement and applications on other subjects soon became numerous; and were sufficient to occupy much time, and to make me practically understand the nervous irritability produced in all Government departments by applications from without. A day or two later I again visited the Post Office, and was present at the sorting of letters for the twopenny post. Here was anything rather than the pressure which I had observed in the evening sorting of the General Post letters, the force being evidently far too great for the work; so that at the rate at which I _saw_ the letters sorted the average number per delivery, say six thousand, might have been sorted completely in the time occupied (about an hour and a quarter) by four persons; and yet the sorters formed quite a crowd. Of course I found in this fact additional reason for that union of the two divisions of letter-carriers which was an essential preliminary to the establishment of the district system. Mr. Baring had expressed a wish that I should visit the French Post Office, which, he had been informed, was in some respects very well managed. Not to dwell too minutely on this inspection, I will only state some few of the results set forth in my report. I found that the gross Post Office revenue of France was about two-thirds that of England; the expenses, about twenty per cent. more, and the net revenue somewhat less than one-half.[279] The rates of postage I found to be about two-thirds of our rates for corresponding distances, but to vary for equal distances, not as with us, according to the number of enclosures, but simply [as I had proposed for England] according to the weight of the letter or packet.[280] I found a kind of book post in use; the charges, however, being regulated not by weight, but by superficial measurement of the paper.[281] Considering the small extent of Paris as compared with London, I found the number of Post Offices much larger, viz., 246 against 237.[282] There was another point on which the French Post Office was—and, it must be admitted, still is—in advance of ours, viz., that it undertakes the transmission of valuables of small dimensions at a commission paid of five per cent. If the article be lost, the Post Office pays the price at which it was valued.[283]