The telegraph system of France constitutes a distinct department of the government service under Viscount A. de Vougy as Director-General. Under him are five general inspectors, forming a kind of council, nine division inspectors, seventy-five inspectors, thirty-eight sub-inspectors, and one electrical engineer. There are altogether 3,708 persons on the staff.
DECREES REGULATING THE USE OF THE TELEGRAPH IN FRANCE.
The following is a digest of the decrees issued by the French government regulating the use of the telegraph in the empire.
1st. All persons whose identity is established are allowed to correspond by the government electric telegraph.
2d. Private correspondence is always subordinate to the necessity of government service.
3d. Despatches are to be written in ordinary and intelligible language, dated and signed by the sender, and to be given to the officer of the telegraph station, whose duty it is to copy in full the despatch, with the address of the sender.
4th. The director of a station may, on grounds of public order and morality, refuse to transmit a despatch. In case of dispute, reference is to be made, in Paris, to the minister of the interior; in the provinces to the prefect, sub-prefect, or other constituted authority. On the receipt of a despatch, the director of the station may withhold its delivery for like reasons.
5th. Private correspondence may be suspended at any time by the government. The government will not assume any responsibility for errors in the transmission of despatches.
6th. The director of the station must be satisfied as to the identity of the sender’s signature. If the director refuses the transmission of a message, he must state his reason in writing on the despatch. He must indorse on it “political,” “offensive,” “not consistent with public good,” etc.
7th. No line of electric telegraph can be established or employed for the transmission of correspondence except by the government, or on its authority. Any person transmitting, without authority, signals from one place to another, whether by electric telegraph, or in any other way, is liable to imprisonment from one month to a year, and a fine of 1,000 to 10,000 francs, and the government may order the destruction of the apparatus and telegraph employed.