FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[155]Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III. 388.[156]Hugh Gray,Letters from Canada, London, 1809.[157]Can. Arch., C. 284, pp. 1-16.[158]Can. Arch., C. 283, p. 42.[159]Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III. 388.[160]Can. Arch., C. 284, p. 172.[161]Ibid., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.[162]Can. Arch., C. 284, p. 114.[163]Ibid., Q. 115, pp. 112, 113 and 121.[164]Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.[165]Can. Arch., C. 284, p. 105.[166]Ibid., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.

[155]Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III. 388.

[156]Hugh Gray,Letters from Canada, London, 1809.

[157]Can. Arch., C. 284, pp. 1-16.

[158]Can. Arch., C. 283, p. 42.

[159]Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III. 388.

[160]Can. Arch., C. 284, p. 172.

[161]Ibid., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.

[162]Can. Arch., C. 284, p. 114.

[163]Ibid., Q. 115, pp. 112, 113 and 121.

[164]Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.

[165]Can. Arch., C. 284, p. 105.

[166]Ibid., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.

Administration of Daniel Sutherland—Postal service on the Ottawa river, and to eastern townships—Ocean mails.

On Heriot's retirement, a number of London merchants who traded to Canada, recommended that the postmaster of Montreal, Daniel Sutherland, be appointed as his successor, and the appointment was made in April 1816.[167]Sutherland entered upon his duties with full knowledge of the postal service in Canada, as he had been postmaster of Montreal since 1807.

An effort was made at this time to remove the headquarters of the department from Quebec to Montreal, but it was not encouraged. The postmaster general was of opinion that, although there were no direct official relations between the governor general and the head of the postal service, it would be inadvisable to diminish in any way the opportunities that then existed of enlisting the good will of the governor towards the post office by the pursuit of a more tactful course than had been taken by Sutherland's predecessor. If, while relations between the chief executive and the deputy postmaster general were thus strained, the office of the latter had been removed to Montreal, the chances of establishing a more cordial feeling on the part of the governor towards the post office would have greatly lessened.

The wisdom of the postmaster general in this matter was soon shown. It was not long before the post office incurred the hostility of the legislatures in both Upper and Lower Canada and its case would have been hard indeed, if it had not obtained the steady support of the governors and the executive councils in the two provinces.

A notable feature of Sutherland's administration was the extension of the service into settlements, which lay far off the beaten lines. The first of these to be provided with a post office was the settlement of Perth. In the summer of 1815, a number of Scotch artisans and peasants sailed from Greenock, attracted by the inducements held out to settlers in British North America,and of these about sixty families spent the winter in Brockville on the St. Lawrence. When spring opened, they proceeded inland till they reached the Rideau river, and took up homes about the site of the present town of Perth.

The new settlement was almost immediately joined by a large number of disbanded troops, who were set free on the conclusion of peace with the United States. By October 1816, there were over sixteen hundred settlers in the district. They were fortunate in securing the interest of Sir John Sherbrooke, the governor general, at whose instance a post office was opened, and fortnightly trips were made with the mails from Brockville.[168]

A road was broken between the two places, but little could be said for it for some time. Dr. Mountain, the son of the first Anglican bishop of Quebec, and himself afterwards third bishop of Quebec, accompanied his father on an episcopal trip into Upper Canada in 1820. Among the places he visited was Perth. Of the road he said: "All the roads I have described before were turnpike and bowling green to this."[169]The road was divided into three stages of seven miles each, and the best the party could do was three hours for each stage.

In 1818, another settlement was formed in the same part of the country about thirty miles north of Perth. It was a military settlement, being made up of officers and men of the 99th and 100th regiments. This group did not enter upon its lands by way of the St. Lawrence, but is notable as the first considerable body to come into Upper Canada by way of the Ottawa river. They landed on the site of the present city of Ottawa, but did not stop there longer than was necessary to break a road through to their lands, which were situated about twenty miles to the westward. The settlement was called Richmond, in honour of the Duke of Richmond, the governor general, and this circumstance gave Ottawa its first name—Richmond Landing.

It was at Richmond that the duke came to his melancholy end that same summer, as the result of the bite of a fox. The duke had shown his interest in the settlement which bore his name in a number of ways, and shortly before his death he induced the deputy postmaster general to open a post office there. In order to provide it with mails, a blazed trail was made between the new settlement and Perth.[170]

The settlement at Richmond was not the first, however, in the Upper Ottawa district. In 1800, Philemon Wright, a New Englander, who had made one or two exploratory tours into the country, determined to form a settlement at Hull, on the Lower Canadian side of the river, and in that year he brought with him a group of his neighbours from Malden, Massachusetts.

These settlers were thrifty and intelligent, and by 1815, they had brought their settlement to a pitch of prosperity, which won special mention from Bouchette, the surveyor general. At that time there were about thirty families in the district, whose farms were in a respectable state of cultivation; and a large trade in timber, pot and pearl ashes was carried on.

The little settlement was so far from Montreal—one hundred and twenty miles—that it was at first impracticable to give it the benefit of the postal service. The isolation did not last long. Little bodies of settlers were taking up land at different points, both above and below the Long Sault rapids; and for some time before 1819, there had been a steamer running between Lachine and Carillon, at the foot of the Long Sault.[171]

In 1819, a steamer was put on the Upper Ottawa, running between the head of the Long Sault and Hull, and the Duke of Richmond appealed to Sutherland to open post offices on the river route. The deputy postmaster general at first demurred on the ground of expense, but he withdrew his objections on a guarantee being given by a number of gentlemen interested in the district, that the post office should be saved against any loss which might ensue. Offices were accordingly opened at St. Eustache and St. Andrews on the lower Ottawa, and at Grenville, Hawkesbury and Hull on the upper part of the river.[172]

Another part of the country to which the postal system was extended during this period was the eastern townships in Lower Canada. These townships lie along the northern border of eastern New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. Owing to their contiguity to the United States, the settlement of these townships gave the British Government much concern.

Lord North, at the close of the war of the Revolution, desired to settle this border country with old soldiers. Haldimand, the governor general, was of another opinion, believing that the interests of peace would be best served by keeping the countryuncultivated, that it might serve as a barrier to the restless spirits from the south. Some effort was made to give effect to this view but without much success. Indeed the governors who followed Haldimand made grants in the townships freely; and in 1812, it was estimated that there were not less than 17,000 people settled there.

Lord Bathurst, the colonial secretary, on learning in 1816 the state of affairs, was highly displeased that the policy of the government had been disregarded in this manner, and directed the governor to do what he could to discourage further settlement, and wherever possible to restore the cultivated country to a state of nature.

Mentioning particularly the townships at the western end of the province, the colonial secretary directed that no new roads were to be run into them, and advantage was to be taken of any circumstances that presented themselves of letting the roads already made fall into disuse. For five years this desolating policy was carried into execution.

In 1821, Lord Dalhousie, the governor general reported that the result was an utter failure. "These townships," he says "are the resort of all the felons escaping from justice within His Majesty's province or from the United States. Forgery, coining, and every crime is committed there with impunity. American lumbermen are cutting everywhere the best timber, and sit down where they please, and move about where they find it convenient."

A reversal of the mistaken policy resulted from the Dalhousie report. The first post office opened in the townships was at Stanstead,[173]the centre of a comfortable, well-settled population of about 2500. The village lay on the main stage route from Quebec into the state of Vermont. The post office at Stanstead was opened in 1817, and with three other offices opened at the same time had a weekly exchange of mails with Quebec by way of Three Rivers.

During Sutherland's administration, there were a considerable number of post offices opened, and many of them established at this period afterwards attained great importance. In 1816, when he became deputy postmaster general, there were only ten offices in Lower Canada and nine in Upper Canada. When he retired in 1827, there were forty-nine in Lower Canada and sixty-five in Upper Canada. In 1816, Belleville post office was opened under the name of bay of Quinte: in 1825, Hamilton, London, Brantford, and St. Thomas were provided with post offices.

In Lower Canada, besides those already mentioned, a post office was opened at Sherbrooke in 1819, replacing an office established in Aston township in 1817.

A curious fact appears in the post office list of 1819. At this date Toronto was still called York, and Hamilton was without a post office altogether. Nevertheless a post office called Toronto was on the list of 1819 as having been opened in 1817, with Charles Fothergill as postmaster, and another called Hamilton was opened in 1819 with James Bethune as postmaster. There was nothing to indicate where these post offices were situated until changes were made in the names, and Toronto was converted into Port Hope and Hamilton into Cobourg.

Fothergill, who had the post office established at Port Hope, appears more than once in the course of post office history. He was member of the house of assembly and king's printer, as well as postmaster. About this time the house began to express dissatisfaction with the service provided by the post office, and to demand information as to its affairs, which the deputy postmaster general was not prepared to furnish. Among the critics was Fothergill, who was speedily punished for his independence. He was dismissed from the office of king's printer by the governor.[174]

The conveyance of the mails between Canada and Great Britain occupied much attention during Sutherland's term. The packets, that is the vessels employed expressly for the conveyance of the mails, had at this date almost ceased to be employed for the transmission of any but official correspondence. The interests of the governors and other officials in British North America and Bermuda, and of the British minister at Washington and consuls in the United States, were the only interests considered in the arrangements for this service.

Speedy transmission was sacrificed without a thought, to provide against imagined dangers to safe transmission. When the packet service was established, the vessels made monthly trips during the summer from Falmouth, in England, to Halifax and thence to New York, returning by the same route. The mails for Bermuda were landed at Halifax, and taken to their destination in a war vessel.

During the winter, the vessels from Falmouth did not run to Halifax, but proceeded directly to New York. In 1806, at the instance of the admiralty, orders were given that, whenever possibleduring the winter, the packets should touch at Bermuda on their way to New York.[175]On the eve of the war of 1812, Prevost, the governor general, who was fearful for the safety of the mails, begged that this course might be adopted as the regular winter course, and that mails for Canada and other parts of British North America should be put off at Bermuda, and conveyed from there to Halifax.

To make the mails for Canada go as far south as Bermuda seems outrageous, but Prevost was willing to put up with any slowness in transmission rather than have his despatches touch United States soil. This course was pursued until the war ended in 1815, and continued for many winters after that time.

But it was too bad to escape criticism from officials themselves. At the end of the summer of 1816, when the packets were about to be taken off the Halifax route, the rear-admiral on the North American station asked that the packets should continue to call at Halifax during the winter, and, by way of satisfying the post office of the feasibility of his suggestion, furnished a list of some seventy vessels which had entered Halifax during the previous winter, which was allowed to be the severest for many years, and found no more trouble in making this port than the port of New York.[176]

The suggestion aroused great opposition—an opposition which would be quite incomprehensible to-day. The agent of the packet service at Falmouth assembled all commanders who happened to be in port, and asked them their opinion. They were unanimous in the belief that the only safe course to Halifax would be to go first to Bermuda, thence to New York, and finally to Halifax.[177]The prevalence of north-westerly winds during the winter would make a direct sailing from Falmouth to Halifax impracticable.

The commanders did not consider it advisable, however, to adopt this course, as it would lengthen the trip by from two to three weeks, and as the voyages would be much rougher, there would be few passengers. The wear and tear on the packets would be greater, and besides the men would require great coats and spirits. During the late war each packet took sixty gallons of rum each way.

Lord Dalhousie became governor general in 1819 and he made bitter complaint of the length of time taken in the delivery of hiswinter despatches.[178]The despatches leaving England in November 1821 and 1822, did not reach him until the following February, and his February despatches arrived in Quebec in May. He asked that the mails containing his correspondence should not be put off the packet at Bermuda, but that they be carried to New York, where he would have his messenger on hand to receive them.

It is difficult to see why this should not have been done. Ever since the establishment of peace in 1783, there had been a British packet agent at New York, whose sole duty it was to act as intermediary for the despatch by the outgoing British packet boat, of all correspondence reaching him from the governors or other officials in British North America, or from the ambassadors or consuls in the United States.[179]

Dalhousie's messenger took his outgoing despatches to the packet agent, and the governor could not understand the objections to allowing the same messenger to carry the incoming despatches back with him. The packet agent at New York strongly supported the governor's request, and pointed out how his own office might be made of much greater utility, if he were employed freely, not only for the transmission of official correspondence, but for the interchange of general correspondence between Canada and Great Britain. He declared that the United States government had shown the utmost courtesy to the governor's messengers. They had not been molested in any way, and for some time past, the earlier practice of requiring the couriers to be provided with passports had been allowed to drop.[180]

The agent proposed that during the winter the English exchange office should make up separate bags for Upper and Lower Canada, which on arrival at New York would be delivered to his office. He would then see that the bags were forwarded by special messenger without delay.

His plan, however, was open to strong objection, and the British post office, which was averse to making any change in the direction proposed, was quick to seize upon it. While acknowledging the good will of the United States government regarding the conveyance of official despatches through their territory by British messengers, the secretary stated that the conveyance of ordinary mails by the same means was a very different matter, which would give rise to a justifiable claim on the part of the United States department, and if the charges which would have to be paid to the UnitedStates department were added to the other postage rates, the total postage to be collected from the recipients of the letters would be very large.

But the argument of the secretary was based on the supposition that the mails would be carried as the despatches were, by Canadian messengers from New York, and that the letters they carried would be subject to a double charge, viz:—the expenses of the messenger, and the sum which the United States might exact for the mere transit over its territory. If the British mails arriving at New York by the packet were handed over to the United States post office for transmission, as had been the case before the war of 1812, there would have been no such excessive charge.

This was what was desired on all sides in Canada. The service would have been much faster, and for Montreal and all places in Upper Canada the postage would have been lower. Since the spring of 1817, steamboats were employed to carry the mails between New York and Albany twice a week, and with other improvements on the route, the time between New York and Montreal was shortened to three days in summer and five in winter.

From New York to York took from nine to eleven days by way of Montreal, and a day less if the mails were carried from New York along the Mohawk valley route to Queenston on the Niagara river, and thence to York.

Compare this with the time occupied between Halifax and Quebec. A month was the average, and to that had to be added two days to Montreal and eight days to York. No advantage enjoyed by Halifax over New York on the sea trip could compensate for the disparity from which the land route between Halifax and Montreal suffered in comparison with the route from New York to Montreal, and as Montreal was the gateway to Upper Canada, the whole of the new province suffered in equal measure with that city.

The gain in time by the New York route was submitted to the general post office, but the proposition to land the mails at that port was opposed by the secretary. He found that there would be eightpence less postage on each letter to Quebec, if it were sent through the United States instead of through the Maritime provinces, and, besides, he was doubtful as to the propriety of sanctioning any scheme which would permit private and mercantile letters to reach Quebec before the government despatches, which in any case must come by way of Halifax.

But though the comings and the goings of the packets were a matter of much concern to Lord Dalhousie and to others, whosecorrespondence had to be carried by this means, they were of little moment to the general public, who had found a very satisfactory means for the conveyance of their correspondence.

In 1826, the treasury set on foot inquiries as to the arrangements for the conveyance of correspondence across the Atlantic, and the information they obtained must have surprised them.[181]There were three modes of sending letters to Canada from Great Britain. The first was by the official sailing packets. The usefulness of the packets, however, was limited to the conveyance of official despatches.

The high charges and the slowness of the service abundantly account for the failure of the public to employ this means of transmission. The postage on a single letter, that is a single sheet of paper weighing less than an ounce, was two shillings and twopence sterling from London to Halifax by way of Falmouth. To this must be added the postage from Halifax to points in Canada, which was one shilling and eightpence to Quebec; one shilling and tenpence to Montreal; two shillings and twopence to Kingston; two shillings and sixpence to York; and three shillings to Amherstburg.

Thus, employing the more familiar decimal currency, the postage on a single sheet, weighing less than one ounce, posted in London and sent by packet to Halifax and thence to its destination in Canada was, to Quebec ninety-two cents; to Montreal ninety-six cents; to Kingston one dollar and four cents; to York one dollar and twelve cents; and to Amherstburg one dollar and twenty-four cents. Remembering Dalhousie's complaint that it took upwards of seventy days for one of these precious letters to reach him, the unpopularity of the packet service can be appreciated.

The second agency for conveying letters from England to Canada, was by private ship, but through the medium of the post office. A person desiring to send a letter from London to a post office in Canada would write on the cover a direction that the letter was to be sent by a ship which he would name, and post it in the ordinary way.

The post office would accept the direction, and would charge just one half the packet postage for the conveyance to Halifax or Quebec, that is, instead of two shillings and twopence for the sea conveyance, the letter would only be charged one shilling and one penny. But the high charges between the port of arrival inBritish North America and the offices in inland Canada prevented the extensive use of this means of conveyance.

The third mode of conveyance was irregular, but it was universally employed. There were lines of sailing vessels, called American packets, running between Liverpool and New York, which were fast sailers, and which would carry letters from England to the United States for twopence a letter, without regard to its weight or the number of enclosures it contained.

The agents of these lines kept bags in their offices in London and Liverpool, and when the vessels were due to sail, the bags were sealed and placed on board. The conveyance of the letter bags from London to Liverpool by the messengers of the sailing lines was illegal, as the postmaster general had the exclusive right to convey letters within the United Kingdom. There could have been no possibility of carrying on the traffic in a clandestine manner, as it was wholesale in character, and comprised the correspondence of the most eminent merchants in London. On inquiry it was learned that one merchant alone sent one thousand letters by this means, and not one by the official packets, and the practice was universal.[182]

On the arrival of the American packets at New York, the letters for Canada were deposited in the New York post office, and forwarded to the Canadian border office in the United States mails, and thence to their destination. The postage by this course was very much less than by either of the other routes.

It was made up of three factors: the ocean postage of four cents, the United States postage of nineteen or twenty-five cents—according to the point at which the Canadian border was reached—and the inland Canadian postage. The charge on a single letter to Quebec was forty-seven cents instead of ninety-two cents, which would be due if sent by the packet route. To Montreal, Kingston, York and Amherstburg, the postage on a letter from London or Liverpool was thirty-one cents, forty-seven cents, forty-one cents and sixty-one cents, as against ninety-six cents, one dollar and four cents, one dollar and twelve cents and one dollar and twenty-four cents respectively.

Letters to York coming from New York had the advantage of a daily conveyance to Lewiston, where the transfer to the Canadianborder office at Queenstown was made, and of the lower charges which the United States post office imposed for long distances. These figures, the lowest then attainable, inevitably suggest comparisons.

It is only a few years since good citizens were rejoicing that the postage rate between the mother country and Canada was brought down from five cents to two cents a letter. Here was a link of empire of daily utility. Communication could be kept up between the British immigrant and his friends at home without too heavy a draft on slender purses. His heart would remain British, and as he prospered he would induce others of his friends and neighbours to come over and settle.

A glance backward will show how little these agencies of empire were able to effect in our grandfather's time. The lowest possible postage charge from London to York fifty years ago was forty-one cents, and that would carry no more than one sheet of paper weighing less than an ounce. If within the folds of this sheet were found another piece of paper no larger than a postage stamp, the charge of conveyance from New York to York was doubled, and with the ocean postage of four cents, the poor immigrant would have to pay seventy-eight cents for his letter.

If the letter weighed an ounce, that is, if it were such a letter as would pass anywhere within the British Empire for four cents, the charge for it coming from London to York would be one dollar and fifty-two cents. Finally, if this ounce letter were sent by the All-Red route, that is by the British packet to Halifax and thence over British soil to York, the postage charge would be four dollars and forty-eight cents. Imperial sentiment must have rivalled wit in economy of expression in those days.

While the British post office was unwilling to encourage the use of the United States mails for the conveyance of letters between Canada and Great Britain, it was anxious to put the British packet service on a better footing. But the service had been going from bad to worse, and it had reached a stage where it satisfied nobody.

Of the three points to which mails were carried—Halifax, New York and Bermuda—the last named always held the position of advantage during the winter. Until the winter of 1826 the packet called first at Bermuda, leaving Canadian mails there, and continuing on to New York. At the beginning of the winter of 1826 a change was made.[183]The packet sailed to Bermuda, put off the United States mails there, and sailed northward to Halifax,omitting New York. The United States mails were conveyed by mail boat from Bermuda to Annapolis, Maryland.

This scheme remedied none of the defects of its predecessor, and brought with it the additional disadvantage that it cut off all direct connection between the British minister at Washington, and the governors of the British colonies.

The secretary of the post office in explaining the arrangements to the postmaster general washed his hands of all responsibility for them. He declared that the plan originated with the admiralty, and was sanctioned by the foreign and colonial secretaries as a practical measure. The postmaster general on reviewing the correspondence was not surprised at the general dissatisfaction, and was glad that the arrangements could not be laid at the door of the post office.

The ocean mail service was beyond the control of the deputy postmaster general of Canada. The postal relations with the United States were not, and he exerted himself to improve these. A hardship under which Canadian merchants doing business with the United States laboured was that they had to pay the postage on all their letters as far as the United States border.

It will be difficult to-day to see wherein the grievance of the early Canadian merchants lay. But at that time the postage was a considerable item in every transaction, and the merchant could not afford to disregard it. When he sold a bill of goods to a customer in the United States, he was obliged to throw on the customer the burden of the postage on the correspondence relating to the goods, and the only sure way of doing this was to post the letters unpaid, and leave the customer to pay the postage on the delivery of the letters. If he had to pay from eight to twenty cents which were required to take each single letter as far as the border, he was apt to lose this sum.

To protect themselves the Canadian merchants used to employ private messengers to carry their letters as far as the nearest post office in the United States, and post them there. From this United States office the letters would go to their destination without pre-payment.

Sutherland informed the postmaster general that some of the leading mercantile houses in Canada sent hundreds of letters into the United States by private hand.[184]

The United States merchant selling goods in Canada stood in a better position as regards his correspondence. He was able topost his letters for Canada unpaid, and the letter came into Canada and went to its destination, where the person addressed paid the postage on delivery of the letter. This was made possible by an arrangement between the deputy postmaster general of Canada, and the post office department at Washington, by which the former undertook to collect and pay over to the latter the share of the postage which was due to the United States department, receiving twenty per cent. for his trouble.

The arrangement was a purely private one, for which Sutherland did not feel called upon to account to the general post office. What he desired was that there should be some postmaster in the United States who would act as agent for the collection of Canadian postage on letters entering the United States from Canada, and he found the postmaster of Swanton, Vermont, quite willing to act in this capacity.

As Swanton was the United States post office through which all correspondence passed from Lower Canada into the United States, the postmaster was well situated for this duty. The only difficulty was about the commission of twenty per cent., which would have to be paid to the postmaster as compensation. It was necessary to obtain the consent of the British post office to this arrangement, as the deputy postmaster general had no power to make abatements in the postage due to Canada, without the authority of the postmaster general.

But this consent the postmaster general was not disposed to give.[185]Besides the objection that the Canadian post office would receive only eighty per cent. of the postage due on letters going to the United States, the secretary suggested to the postmaster general that it would seem inadvisable, politically, to encourage unlimited correspondence between all sorts of persons in the two countries, without possibility of restriction or of learning (should it be necessary) with whom any particular person was in correspondence.

Indeed, the secretary had his doubts as to the legality of the arrangement by which Sutherland acted as agent for the collection of the United States postage on letters coming from that country into Canada. The rates of postage, said he, are distinctly specified in various acts of parliament, and the Canadian post office had no power to demand more than the sum required by the statutes. If it were thought advisable to have Canadian postmasters collect United States postage, a new legislative provision would have to bemade, which would lead to similar applications from other countries, and the result would be confusion and loss of revenue.

Whatever might have been the consequence of a strict interpretation of the law, as intimated by the postmaster general, the deputy postmaster general did not discontinue the convenient, and, to him, profitable practice of providing for the transmission of unpaid letters from the United States addressed to Canada.

So far from that, Sutherland improved on this arrangement. At the solicitation of Canadian merchants, he obtained the consent of the United States department to having British mails, landed at New York, passed on to Canada without being held for the United States postage. The postage due for the conveyance of the letters through the United States was collected by the deputy postmaster general, and transmitted by him to Washington, and the delays incident to having this work done in the United States were avoided.[186]

On the 15th of February, 1825, a memorial[187]was addressed to the British government by the Marquess of Ormonde, the Knight of Kerry and Simon McGillivray, proposing to establish communication between Great Britain and the British North American colonies by steam vessels, and asking for the exclusive privilege of providing such a service for fourteen years.

At this time steamboats were in pretty general use in the inland and coastal waters of Great Britain, United States and Canada, but nothing had up to this time been done to demonstrate that it would be practicable to cross the Atlantic by a steamboat.

In 1819, a sailing vessel, the "Savannah," fitted up with a boiler and engine and provided with a pair of paddles which could be hauled on deck at will, started from Savannah, Georgia, for Liverpool. The voyage occupied twenty-seven days. Only for three days and eight hours was the "Savannah" under steam.

There was nothing in this experiment to induce the conviction that steam could be successfully employed as a means of propulsion on the transatlantic service, and as a matter of fact the machinery was removed from the "Savannah" on her return to her American port, and she spent the rest of a short existence as an ordinary sailing vessel between New York and Savannah.

Lord Ormonde and his associates were convinced of the practicability of steam navigation across the Atlantic, but to make an enterprise of that kind a success, they would have to satisfy the public on the point, and this would involve a large outlay. Inasking for a fourteen years' monopoly, they argued that their proposition would not produce the ordinary ill-effects of a monopoly, as any tendency they might exhibit towards excessive charges would be held in check by sailing vessels, and by steamships, which would inevitably be run between the United States and ports on the continent of Europe.

The proposed line was to consist of six vessels, three of 1000 tons, and three of 600 tons, which would make their way across the Atlantic in pairs, one large and one small steamer. The vessels would sail together between Valentia, Ireland, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. On arrival at Halifax, the vessels would separate, one going to New York and the other to Quebec. When the two vessels reached Valentia on the voyage home, one would proceed to Glasgow, and the other to Bristol. The memorial was not entertained, and the project dropped.

Sutherland, in his personal relations, showed much more tact than Heriot; and in the controversies which arose between him and the colonial legislatures, Sutherland contrived to range himself on the side of the governors, thus making the post office one of the matters of which the ultra-British parties undertook the defence against the attacks of the Radicals.

But the situation of the deputy postmaster general was too difficult for him to secure unalloyed success. The various interests he had to serve, and, as far as possible, to reconcile, were too antagonistic for complete success. On the one side was a country being settled rapidly and clamouring for postal service in all directions. On the other stood the general post office fixed in its determination that its profits should not be diminished, and scanning anxiously every fresh item of expenditure.

Any serious inclination in one direction was sure to arouse resentment in the other. A curious instance of this occurred in 1819, three years after Sutherland had taken office. A number of merchants and others in Montreal appointed a committee to wait on the deputy postmaster general with a memorial containing an expression of their opinions and desires respecting the postal service in Canada.

The post office in Montreal it was urged had become unsuitable as regards site and space for the accommodation of the public, and the assistance employed by the postmaster was unequal to the requirements of an efficient service. The communications with the United States, Upper Canada and within the province, should be increased in frequency, and an interchange of mailsshould be opened with the Genesee and other settlements in New York state by way of Prescott and Ogdensburg. The memorialists also desired that letters might be sent to the United States without prepayment of postage.

Sutherland, in his reply to the memorial, dealt with the committee with an engaging frankness.[188]He was well aware, he said, that the accommodation in Montreal post office was inadequate, but what was to be done? The postmaster had only £300 a year salary, and out of that he had to pay office rent and stationery. It was not to be wondered at, that the postmaster endeavoured to economize in every way possible. He, himself, had on more than one occasion advised the postmaster general of the necessity for greater clerical help, but so far without the desired effect.

Only the year before, Sutherland told the memorialists, he had submitted to the postmaster general with his strongest recommendation, a petition from the postmaster of Montreal for increased salary and assistance, but the petition was refused. As for the increase in the frequency of the communications it was beyond his power to authorize such an expenditure. He had done his best on two recent occasions to induce the postmaster general to allow letters to go into the United States without the prepayment of postage, but was told that British postage must be paid on letters going into foreign states.

The memorial and Sutherland's reply were transmitted to the general post office. There they excited much indignation. Freeling, the secretary, in a minute to the postmaster general, professed his inability to understand whether this unreserved disclosure of Sutherland's proceeded merely from indiscretion or from some other motive. The postmaster general was, in effect, accused of inattention and supineness in the discharge of his duties. His decisions were placed in the most invidious light before the inhabitants of Montreal.

Indeed the whole circumstance had to Freeling the air of an understanding between Sutherland and the committee. The postmaster general was equally indignant, and ordered Sutherland's dismissal. But, as so often happened, Freeling changed his attitude, urging a number of countervailing circumstances against this extreme measure, and the postmaster general, who appeared to do little more than to convert the opinions and suggestions which Freeling so humbly submitted into departmental decisions, concurred in this recommendation.[189]

In 1824, Sutherland met with a serious financial loss. The postmaster at Montreal became a defaulter to the extent of £1706. Sutherland took action against the postmaster's sureties, but owing to informalities his suit was thrown out. He appealed to the general post office, alleging that the reason of his non-suit was its failure to answer certain questions which he had put to the postmaster general. The appeal was not allowed. In 1827, Sutherland retired owing to ill-health, and was succeeded by his son-in-law, Thomas Allen Stayner, the last and, in some respects, the most distinguished of the representatives of the British post office in Canada.

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