convenient, and reasonable in England than in France.
The English carriages, horses, harness, and roads are much better; and
the postilions more obliging and alert. The reason is plain and
obvious. If I am ill-used at the post-house in England, I can be
accommodated elsewhere. The publicans on the road are sensible of this,
and therefore they vie with each other in giving satisfaction to
travellers. But in France, where the post is monopolized, the
post-masters and postilions, knowing that the traveller depends
intirely upon them, are the more negligent and remiss in their duty, as
well as the more encouraged to insolence and imposition. Indeed the
stranger seems to be left intirely at the mercy of those fellows,
except in large towns, where he may have recourse to the magistrate or
commanding officer. The post stands very often by itself in a lone
country situation, or in a paultry village, where the post-master is
the principal inhabitant; and in such a case, if you should be
ill-treated, by being supplied with bad horses; if you should be
delayed on frivolous pretences, in order to extort money; if the
postilions should drive at a waggon pace, with a view to provoke your
impatience; or should you in any shape be insulted by them or their
masters; and I know not any redress you can have, except by a formal
complaint to the comptroller of the posts, who is generally one of the
ministers of state, and pays little or no regard to any such
representations. I know an English gentleman, the brother of an earl,
who wrote a letter of complaint to the Duc de Villars, governor of
Provence, against the post-master of Antibes, who had insulted and
imposed upon him. The duke answered his letter, promising to take order
that the grievance should be redressed; and never thought of it after.
Another great inconvenience which attends posting in France, is that if
you are retarded by any accident, you cannot in many parts of the
kingdom find a lodging, without perhaps travelling two or three posts
farther than you would choose to go, to the prejudice of your health,
and even the hazard of your life; whereas on any part of the post-road
in England, you will meet with tolerable accommodation at every stage.
Through the whole south of France, except in large cities, the inns are
cold, damp, dark, dismal, and dirty; the landlords equally disobliging
and rapacious; the servants aukward, sluttish, and slothful; and the
postilions lazy, loung