320
Order in Council (France).
MAIL SHIPS.
lations of those ports concerning the arrival and departure of travellers and merchandise.
7. The packets of the two Administrations may enter and leave the ports of the two States at any hour of the day or night. They may also, if they think proper, without anchoring, embark or disembark the mails and passengers, in the roads or at the entrance of the harbours, so long as they observe the regulations referred to in the preceding Article.
8. Whenever a packet carrying mails shall be compelled to put into any port of either of the two States other than that at which such packet ought to touch, the administration on whose territory the said mails shall be landed shall use the most certain and expeditious means of forwarding them to their destination.
9. In case of war between the two nations, the packets of the two Administrations shall continue their navigation, without impediment or molestation, until a notification is made on the part of either of the two Governments of the discontinuance of postal communications; in which case they shall be permitted to return freely, and under special protection, to their respective ports.
10. The captains of the packets engaged in the conveyance of the respective mails of the two Administrations are forbidden to take charge of any letter not included in those mails, with the exception, however, of despatches of their Governments. They must take care that no letters are conveyed illegally by the crews or passengers, and they must give information in the proper quarter of any infringement which may be committed in this respect.
11. There shall be reserved in the vans, carriages, or trucks conveying between Modane and Calais the mails from the East Indies for Great Britain, or from Great Britain for the East Indies, a place free of charge for a British courier, who shall keep the mails under his special care, and who shall have the right to be present at the disinfection of the correspondence contained in those mails whenever it shall take place, and at all other operations to which the said correspondence may be subjected.
The same advantages shall be granted in the territory of Great Britain to the couriers of the French Postal Administration, should that Administration think proper to send a French courier in charge of mails containing correspondence from or for France passing through Great Britain and paid for at special transit rates.
12. The British Postal Administration and the Postal Administration of France shall nominate, by mutual consent, the offices through which the exchange of correspondence shall respectively take place. They