The French Fee System. 
91 
Paris established in the thirteenth century. These messengers 
were primarity for the purpose of carrying the letters and 
merchandise of the professors and the students at the Univer¬ 
sity of Paris. These messengers, however, soon carried mail 
for others also, and, protected by royal favor, the system grew 
into a great monopoly, from which the University derived con¬ 
siderable revenue. In 1546 Louis XI issued an edict, estab¬ 
lishing regular postal stations, with relays for messengers, thus 
creating a state postal system, which competed to a certain ex¬ 
tent with the University messengers. This continued up to 
1673, when the University was given an annual indemnity in 
lieu of the revenues from this source. From this time on, the 
state had a monopoly of the business, which was farmed out 
to different parties up to 1791. The postal fees collected before 
the Revolution were very complicated; because an attempt was 
made to vary the charges not only according to the distance, 
but also according to the weight and the number of sheets con¬ 
tained in the letter. A letter sent from Paris to Marseilles 
cost at one time as much as two francs and two centimes in 
postage. The last postal tariff which was made proportional 
to distance was that of 1827, according to which France was 
divided into nine zones and postal rates fixed for each zone. 
This system remained in force up to 1848, when the National 
Assembly adopted the uniform rate of twenty centimes for all 
letters weighing seven and one-half grammes or less. Under 
this system the amount of mail matter carried, increased enor¬ 
mously, but the immediate effect of the law was to decrease 
the amount of revenue derived from the post office. After the 
Franco-German war, France found it necessary to utilize the 
post office as a means of raising revenue; and, to do this, the 
postage on letters weighing ten grammes or less was increased, 
by the law of August 24, 1871, from twenty centimes to twenty- 
five. This tariff remained in force down to 1878, when a law 
was passed reducing the charge to fifteen centimes for letters 
weighing fifteen grammes. 
