FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[225]C. O. Rec.(Can. Arch.), N.S., A. 103, p. 134.[226]See p. 86.[227]Quebec Gazette, December 13, 1787.[228]Winslow Papers, 1776-1826 (printed under the auspices of the New Brunswick Historical Society, 1901).[229]Heriot to Howe, August 30, 1812 (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.).[230]Howe to Freeling, June 20, 1816 (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.).[231]Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, April 4, III.[232]Freeling to postmaster general, August 11, 1823, with enclosures (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.).[233]Howe to Freeling, October 18, 1825 (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, II.).[234]Quebec Almanac, 1802, p. 71.[235]Capt. Im Thurm to Freeling, April 5, 1819 (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.).[236]Kempt to colonial office, March 26, 1821.[237]Quebec Almanac, 1802, p. 71.[238]Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.[239]Journals of Assembly, Nova Scotia, 1830, p. 717.[240]Hay to Freeling, January 15, 1834, and accompanying papers (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, IV.).[241]Journals of Assembly, Nova Scotia, 1836, App. 73.[242]Journals of Assembly, Nova Scotia, 1839, App. 8.[243]Letters from Young and Huntingdon to Baring, June 21, 1839, and accompanying papers (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, VIII.)

[225]C. O. Rec.(Can. Arch.), N.S., A. 103, p. 134.

[226]See p. 86.

[227]Quebec Gazette, December 13, 1787.

[228]Winslow Papers, 1776-1826 (printed under the auspices of the New Brunswick Historical Society, 1901).

[229]Heriot to Howe, August 30, 1812 (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.).

[230]Howe to Freeling, June 20, 1816 (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.).

[231]Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, April 4, III.

[232]Freeling to postmaster general, August 11, 1823, with enclosures (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.).

[233]Howe to Freeling, October 18, 1825 (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, II.).

[234]Quebec Almanac, 1802, p. 71.

[235]Capt. Im Thurm to Freeling, April 5, 1819 (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.).

[236]Kempt to colonial office, March 26, 1821.

[237]Quebec Almanac, 1802, p. 71.

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

[239]Journals of Assembly, Nova Scotia, 1830, p. 717.

[240]Hay to Freeling, January 15, 1834, and accompanying papers (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, IV.).

[241]Journals of Assembly, Nova Scotia, 1836, App. 73.

[242]Journals of Assembly, Nova Scotia, 1839, App. 8.

[243]Letters from Young and Huntingdon to Baring, June 21, 1839, and accompanying papers (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, VIII.)

Continuance of agitation in the Canadas for control of the post office—Much information obtained by committees of legislatures—Difficulty in giving effect to reforms.

The proposals of the British post office for removing the objections to the existing arrangements without endangering the efficiency of the colonial postal system had a very different reception in the assemblies of Upper and Lower Canada from that which they met with in the Maritime provinces.

Owing to a general indisposition on the part of the legislatures of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to push their contentions to extremes, and doubtless also, to the fortunate relationship between the deputy postmaster general of the Maritime provinces and Joseph Howe, the leader of the reform party in Nova Scotia, the post office had been subject to no authoritative criticism in those provinces up to the time when the plans of the British post office were laid before the legislatures.

In the Canadas the situation was exactly the reverse, as regards both the state of public feeling and the claims of the deputy postmaster general upon the forbearance of the assemblies.

The discussion of political grievances was arousing in the popular party a bitterness which was fast carrying the agitation for remedies beyond constitutional bounds; and as for Stayner, he had quite alienated from himself the good will of the assemblies in Upper and Lower Canada, by his open identification of himself with the government party. When, therefore, the British proposals were laid before the assembly of Upper Canada by the lieutenant governor in 1835, they were rejected with the contemptuous observation that the provisions of the proposed bill were so absurd and inapplicable that no benefit could be expected from any attempt to amend them.[244]

The legislatures were not aware of the circumstances which had led to the British proposals. The fact that the views for which they had contended had been upheld by authorities soeminent as the law officers of the crown was withheld from them. The changed attitude of the postmaster general was therefore regarded by the assemblies as a proof of the success of their agitation, and they girded themselves up for renewed efforts.

As a preliminary to fresh attacks the assemblies in both provinces demanded from Stayner a mass of information, the extent of which filled him with dismay. But no further refusals on his part were possible. The colonial office was scarcely more pleased with Stayner and his methods than the provincial assemblies were, and the postmaster general was requested to see there were no more concealments.

The work which fell upon Stayner in the preparation of the returns called for was enormous. As printed by the legislature of Lower Canada, the documents produced filled two hundred and sixty-eight quarto pages. Stayner appears to have withheld nothing. He became as effusive as he had formerly been reticent. He published letters written by himself to his official superiors, which must have proved embarrassing to them.

In the correspondence Stayner disclosed was a letter from the postmaster of Montreal, pleading for a more suitable room for his post office.[245]From this letter it appears that in 1835, the post office in Montreal was in the upper storey of a building standing between theGazetteprinting establishment and a boarding house, and underneath it was a tailoring and dry goods shop. To get to the post office the public had to grope up an unlighted flight of stairs at the risk of their limbs, and when they reached the top they had to make their way across a small lobby half-filled with firewood.

As an inducement to the department to provide more suitable quarters, the postmaster stated that the merchants were so sensible of the inconvenience and danger from fire, that the postmaster thought they would help with the erection of a proper building, if applied to.

Stayner also produced the copy of a letter he had written a short time before, to the secretary of the general post office protesting his inability to meet the wants of the provinces with the means which the postmaster general had placed at his disposal. The letter deals chiefly with the conditions in Upper Canada, and as a description of the situation in that province it could not be bettered. The occasion of the letter was a complaint made by agentleman in England that it had taken from the 12th of June until the 12th of October for a letter, addressed by him to his son in Barrie, to reach its destination.

Stayner in reporting on the subject, admitted that this was quite likely the case, but insisted that no blame was imputable to him. The nearest post office to Barrie was from thirty to forty miles distant, and it was probable that the letter had lain a couple of months at that office before being called for.

The case of the Barrie settlers was typical of that of thousands of well-educated people inhabiting the back parts of Upper Canada, where they had formed thriving towns and villages from twenty to fifty miles from the existing posts. These people with whom postal accommodation was almost a necessity of life were entirely without the means of corresponding with their distant friends, unless they sent and received their letters by private agency.

Stayner declared that he was well within bounds in saying that at that moment there were between two hundred and three hundred distinct societies of people spread over the country in Upper Canada alone, who, like the settlers in Barrie, were suffering from want of that accommodation which he would fain give them, if he had the power to do it. The case was to be the more lamented from the fact that the reasonable wants of these people could be supplied without burdening the post office revenue.

So active was the spirit of enterprise amongst the class of persons crowding into the new settlements throughout the whole extent of Upper Canada, as well as in many parts of the lower province, and so great was their disposition for letter writing, that Stayner was sure in a short time the increased revenue would amply repay the outlay required. But with the assistance allowed him, it was impossible to meet those demands.

It was indispensable that he should have at least two travelling officers, whose duty it should be to examine into the merits of applications, to settle questions of site, and arrange for mail carriers. As for mail carriers, Stayner believed that the surveyors would save their salaries by that item alone, as in the absence of officials who would make arrangements on the spot, the post office was being constantly exposed to imposition by carriers, against which it was impossible to provide.

During the first five years he had been in office, Stayner had increased the number of offices under his control from ninety to two hundred and seventy, but beyond that it was impossible for him, with his present assistance, to go. The parts of the countrywhere new offices were called for were so remote, and the means of information so unsatisfactory that it would be improper for him to open offices and make contracts for serving them, without the advice of persons acting under his orders, upon whose judgment he could rely.

At that moment, Stayner further told the committee, the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada required not less than five hundred offices, that is, practically double the number then in operation, and in ten years, at least one thousand offices would be necessary to provide the requisite accommodation. With proper assistance he could establish and put into successful operation all that were wanted at the rate of one hundred a year. Less than that scale of advancement would fail to satisfy the public.

The complaints of the people had become so loud and threatening that, unless they were speedily met, Stayner was apprehensive they would be engrafted upon the catalogue of provincial grievances. Before he left England, Stayner had the postmaster general's promise that two surveyors would be at once appointed. He had waited as long as he felt that he dared, but the situation had become so alarming, that he had taken it upon himself to appoint two surveyors who would act under his directions, until regular appointments could be made.

After Stayner laid before the houses of assembly in the two provinces the various returns they had called for, committees were struck in each house to consider the information contained in the statements. The committee in Lower Canada took the evidence of Stayner and of William Lyon Mackenzie who happened to be in Quebec at the time, conferring with the reform leaders in Lower Canada.

Mackenzie's statement was a general arraignment of the administration of the post office. He declared that, as then constituted, the post office in the opinion of the assembly of Upper Canada, was an illegal institution, monopolizing the conveyance of epistolary correspondence which it taxes heavily, and appropriating the proceeds in England, without the knowledge and consent of the assembly.

It arbitrarily and often capriciously, the reformer from Upper Canada complained, fixed the sites of post offices, and dismissed and appointed the incumbents. It resolved that one section of the country, though thickly settled, should have no post offices, while another part which was almost destitute of inhabitants had regular mails. Newspapers were taxed at such a rate as thepost office thought fit, and the proceeds were held by the deputy postmaster general as his perquisite.

In short, Mackenzie was emphatic in his declaration that the establishment was a poor substitute for a provincial post office, which would be regulated by law, and its revenues disposed of by the authority of the legislature. He gave some curious illustrations of the inequalities which marked the operation of the newspaper regulations.

While Mackenzie was in England, Joseph Hume secured the production of a number of documents relating to the Canadian post office, which the legislatures in Canada had tried in vain to obtain from Stayner. Among these was a statement showing the amount paid by the several newspaper publishers for the distribution of their papers by the post office. On looking over the list Mackenzie was surprised at the very moderate amounts paid by publishers of some of the most widely-circulated papers.The Montreal Gazette, for instance, distributed nearly two thousand copies by post, but paid postage on only two hundred and fifty copies.

Mackenzie made some further inquiries, and found that all sorts of irregularities prevailed, which Stayner in the weakness of his position was fain to connive at. The publisher of one paper in Kingston told Mackenzie that he entered seventy-five copies as sent by post, while mailing four hundred copies; another reported sixty copies and sent three hundred. A third publisher, who objected to paying the usual charge of four shillings per copy per annum, was let off with two shillings and sixpence per copy; while a fourth publisher paid no postage at all for several years.

Until that time Mackenzie had been paying the regular charges for all copies of his newspaper—The Colonial Advocate—which he sent by mail. But he determined to be no longer the victim of such barefaced discrimination, and he accordingly began to enter for postage only a part of the total issue distributed through the mails.

In order that he might not be open to a charge of dishonesty, and perhaps also to help in the exposure of a vicious system, Mackenzie told the postmaster at Toronto what he was doing, and at the same time published the facts in his newspaper. This, of course, could not be tolerated by Stayner, and he demanded from Mackenzie the full postage on all his papers sent through the mails.

Mackenzie refused to pay, but declared that if Stayner would allow the case to go before a jury in Toronto, Stayner might employ all the counsel in the colony to support his demand, and if the jury could be persuaded to render a verdict against him, he pledgedhimself to pay the demand and all expenses. The offer was, of course, declined and the claim was dropped.

In the course of a long examination, Stayner was taken over all the points in controversy between the postmaster general and the Canadian provinces. Dr. O'Callaghan,[246]who soon afterwards acquired notoriety as a leader in the rebellion, was chairman of the committee. He and his associates in the inquiry had sat on several earlier committees and were well versed in the points at issue.

With the aid of the documents produced, the O'Callaghan committee managed to elicit from Stayner a fairly complete statement of the position of the post office in the Canadas in 1834-1835. Asked as to his authority for appropriating to his own use the proceeds of the newspaper postage, he was unable to point to it. But he stated that he knew it had been repeatedly recognized by the head of the department in London, and he had never considered it incumbent upon him or even proper to inquire into the date or form of the authority.

To a committee convinced that everything appertaining to the post office bore the marks of illegality, this answer could not be satisfactory. Stayner was consequently next asked whether he considered that any usage, precedent or custom could give him a right to tax any portion of His Majesty's subjects without the express consent of parliament. To this he replied in the negative, but added that he never doubted that the postmaster general, in permitting his deputy in Canada to send newspapers through the post for a compensation to himself, was borne out by law.

What the statute was which the postmaster general held to be his authority, Stayner could not, with confidence, say. But it occurred to him that it might be an act passed in 1763,[247]which confirmed certain officers attached to the principal secretaries of state and to the postmaster general, in the privilege which they long enjoyed of franking newspapers and other printed matter.

As a matter of fact, this was the statute cited by the postmaster general when required to produce his authority for allowing Stayner and other deputies to treat the proceeds from newspapers as their perquisites, and as we consider this act, we may admire the prudence with which Stayner declined an argument as to its sufficiency as authority for the practice.

Stayner was on firmer ground when he pointed out that thepost office act had made no provision for the conveyance of newspapers, and that, as things stood, the only alternatives before the publishers were to pay the prohibitive letter rates on their newspapers, or to come to terms with him, under the permission of the postmaster general.

The committee were loath to leave this controversial advantage with Stayner and asked him whether, since the newspapers were carried in the mail bags, he paid from the newspaper postage any part of the mail couriers' wages. He said he did not, and then committed himself to the extraordinary proposition that it cost nothing to carry newspapers because they were in the same bags with the letters. The committee did not waste any time arguing such a point as that, but called the contractor for the conveyance of the mails between Montreal and Quebec, who testified that if he were relieved of the newspapers, he could carry the mails on horseback, at a saving of £200 a year.

The O'Callaghan committee in their report to the assembly—a report which was made on the 8th of March, 1836, invited attention in the first place to the large sums which were sent by the deputy postmaster general to England from the revenues of the Canadian post office. During the thirteen years ended in 1834, the large amount of £91,685 sterling had been remitted to the British treasury on this account, and the remittances for the last four years averaged annually £10,041 sterling.

These remittances, and the usage under which they were made, the committee denounced as a violation of the fundamental rights of the people of the colony, and as an instance of the disregard of the declaratory act of 1778, which had cost Great Britain her American colonies, "now the flourishing and happy United States of America." Regarding the imperial act of 1834 as an admission that the British government had acted illegally in appropriating to its own use the surplus Canadian postal revenues, the committee assumed that the deputy postmaster general would cease to make remittances of Canadian revenues to England.

On discovering that this was not the case, the committee gave Stayner notice that the assembly would probably hold him personally responsible for any further remittances thus improperly made. Stayner, however, paid no attention to this warning, as he had but a short time before deposited $20,000 in the commissariat office for transmission to London.

Stayner's course in treating the newspaper postage as his perquisite came in for the strongest reprobation. The statutoryauthority which he ventured to put forward was easily shown to be no authority at all, and the committee declared it to be a monstrous absurdity that the head of the department should, in defiance of all law, presume to fix the charges on newspapers, and put the proceeds in his pocket.

From the statement furnished by Stayner, it appeared that no less than £9550 currency had been appropriated by him from this source during the six years he had held the office of deputy postmaster general, and the committee suggested that, as he had no shadow of right to any part of this large sum, legal proceedings should be taken by the province to recover the amount from him.

The total income which Stayner acknowledged having received was beyond belief. In each of the three years ending with and including 1834, his emoluments amounted on the average to £3185 currency. These emoluments were described graphically by the committee as nearly equal to the salary of the governor general, three times more than the salary of any of the puisne judges in the province, almost equal to the whole amount paid as compensation to the one hundred and thirty-seven postmasters in Upper Canada, and one-third more than the total amount received by the one hundred and seventeen postmasters in Lower Canada.

The committee endeavoured to convict Stayner of having misled the postmaster general as to the magnitude of his income. They were unsuccessful in this attempt, as the postmaster general was quite aware of the amount Stayner was receiving, and had expressed no disapproval.

The committee as a conclusion to its report urged that the provincial government should take over the control of the provincial post office, and they submitted the draft of a bill which they had prepared for the purpose of sanctioning the action recommended. The house of assembly adopted the report of the committee, and having passed the bill, sent it up to the legislative council for approval.

In the legislative council the bill was rejected. The majority of the council were Stayner's friends, and they saw that he had a full chance to express his views before a committee appointed by the council. He set the draft bill prepared by the postmaster general beside the assembly bill, and effectively contrasted the strong points of the former with the weakness of the latter.

The imperial bill, Stayner emphasised before the committee of the council, dealt with British North America as one territoryas regards regulations and charges, and in his opinion, unless the several provinces were to be so regarded, an efficient service among the provinces themselves, and between the provinces and other countries, would be impossible.

In order to encourage correspondence between the distant parts of the colonies, the imperial bill fixed the comparatively low rate of eighteen pence for all distances beyond five hundred miles. Thus a letter could be sent from Amherstburg to Halifax or Charlottetown for that sum. If each colony had its own separate postal administration the charge on letters passing between those places would, in the most favourable circumstances, cost two or three times as much. Stayner was far from agreeing that, in all its details, the imperial bill was perfect, but he was convinced that the principle on which it was based was the only practicable one.

The great objection Stayner saw in the bill of the assembly was that it was a local bill operative only within the province. Intercourse between Lower Canada and the other provinces had to be provided for, since where there are several states under one supreme head, the free exchange of correspondence between them is indispensable.

The British government, whose interests in the different provinces required that communication between them and the mother country should be uninterrupted, could never consent, Stayner was sure, to any local arrangements by which those communications might be jeopardized. The cost of communication between province and province would be prohibitive, and the consequence would be moral isolation. The separate states of the American Union, jealous as they were of any impairment of their rights, recognized the necessity of a common postal service.

Stayner dwelt convincingly on the technical difficulties of accounting and distributing the charges on inter-provincial correspondence, and on correspondence between Canada and Great Britain. As it happened at the time, most of the letters sent between Canada and England passed by way of the United States. But that was a courtesy on the part of the United States government which might be terminated at any time, and then the Canadian provinces would be entirely dependent on the province by the sea.

If each province charged its full local rates on correspondence passing through it, and Stayner could see no reason why any of the provinces should favour its neighbours at the expense of its own people, the charge on a letter sent from Upper Canada toEngland would not be less than six or seven shillings, while under the British draft bill, the charge would scarcely ever exceed two shillings.

The legislative council adopted Stayner's reasoning entirely. It admitted that if the post office were an institution of merely local utility, there would be little to amend in the bill sent up by the assembly. Since, however, there were several provinces concerned, whose concurrent action was essential, the conflict of interest which must inevitably arise would make the harmonious working of the separate parts of the system difficult, if not impossible.

As an instance of the difficulties springing out of the divergence of interest among the provinces, the council recalled the fact that it became necessary to invite the intervention of the mother country to settle the apportionment of the customs revenues between the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. The council suggested to the governor general that if this line of reasoning were found acceptable, a satisfactory settlement of the whole question would be reached by requiring the deputy postmaster general to furnish annually full information as to the conditions, financial and other, of the post office.

The free transmission of the correspondence of members of the legislature, the council urged, should be provided for. The deputy postmaster general should be removable on the joint address of the two houses of the legislature; the salaries of all officials should be fixed, and perquisites of every kind withdrawn. Finally such alterations should be made in the rates of postage, such post offices established and such arrangements adopted for the regulation and management of the service, as were called for by the joint address of the two houses.

The plans elaborated by the British post office for the settlement of the colonial difficulties found no more favour in Upper Canada than in the other provinces. The assembly condemned the draft bill as unworthy of consideration. The terms in which the scheme was dismissed by the assembly were sufficiently slighting, but the colonial secretary was not in the mood to be resentful.

Lord Glenelg was impressed with the substantial justice of the claims of the assemblies in the two provinces, and would not make a stand on a point of manners. As Sir Francis Bond Head was about to come to Upper Canada to take up the lieutenantgovernorshipin succession to Colbome, Glenelg, in his letter of instructions[248]directed Head to make every effort to bring the post office question to a satisfactory conclusion.

Noticing the opinion given by the assembly on the postmaster general's scheme of settlement, Glenelg thought it right to say that the bill had the very careful consideration of the postmaster general before being sent to the several provinces. The government, however, had no desire to urge the adoption of any measure to which well-founded objections existed. They were content that the bill should be withdrawn, to make way for any better bill that might be proposed by the house.

The assembly might find, on approaching the subject more closely, continued Glenelg, that unexpected difficulties would crop up, particularly with regard to intercourse by post with places beyond the limits of the province. The lieutenant governor was authorized to assent to any judicious and practicable measure which the house might incorporate in a bill, and to regard as of no importance, when opposed to the general convenience of the public, any considerations of patronage or revenue derivable from this source.

Notwithstanding this conciliatory statement, the house proceeded along the same lines as those followed by the assembly in Lower Canada. They drew up a series of resolutions[249]providing for the establishment of a post office department with headquarters in Toronto. Specified sums were allotted for the maintenance of a head office, and for the salaries of the postmaster general and his staff. The rates were fixed on letters and newspapers, and the percentage of revenue to be allowed postmasters as salaries was defined.

The house was unsparing in its condemnation of Stayner. They estimated that during the ten years preceding, the large sum of £48,000 had been withdrawn from the province through the exactions of the post office, an amount which they said would have sufficed to establish five district banks, suited to the wants of as many different sections of the country.

The advantages of a provincial establishment appeared to the house to be very great. A large amount of wealth would be kept in the province, which was sent to Quebec, either for transmission to England, or to make up the perquisites of officials; post offices could be opened wherever they were required, and no distant part of the province would be without the means of cheapand convenient accommodation; postmasters would be better paid, and the postage on letters and newspapers would be reduced; and extravagance could be checked and abuses corrected.

The house was fully aware of the objections to a local post office system, but in their opinion those objections were not to be mentioned beside the numerous advantages the provincial post office would provide. It would be far easier for the department to open accounts with the present or any other post office department that might be organized, than it was to arrange with the United States for the interchange of correspondence with that country, and yet there was a very extensive exchange between Canada and the United States without the aid of any law whatever.

In considering the terms of a post office bill, the house had before it a list of conditions—thirty-one in number—which a committee recommended for consideration. Many of these were obvious. Others concerned matters of detail. Some were trivial.

One peculiar condition was that £100 a year should be allotted for the purchase of books and instruments, which might be useful in helping to keep the roads in a proper state of repair. The plans for the establishment of a post office department in Upper Canada did not reach completion, as the assembly was dissolved a month after the resolutions were adopted, in consequence of its refusal to vote supplies.

The termination of these agitations in the assemblies of Upper and Lower Canada, mark the close of a period in the relations between the provincial legislatures and the post office. The resolutions which were directed against the constitutional status of the post office, and the demands for separate provincial establishments ceased at this point. This was due rather to the disappearance of the opponents of the existing system than to the removal of the causes for complaint.

The Lower Canadian assembly held a session of less than a fortnight at the end of September and the beginning of October 1836, and another of a week in August 1837, when it was dissolved, not to be resumed. During those sessions the affairs of the post office were not mentioned. In Upper Canada the election, which followed upon the dissolution of May 1836, resulted in a great victory for the government party.

Before resuming the narrative of events in the British North American provinces, it will be convenient to see how the late proceedings were regarded by the home government. Lord Gosford, the governor general, in transmitting to the colonial secretary thebill framed by the assembly of Lower Canada, observed that it was intended as a substitute for the imperial bill of 1834, which did not suit the ideas of the house.

One of the reasons adduced against the post office was that the money which the deputy postmaster general sent to England was the produce of an illegal tax levied in violation of the act of 1778. In December 1835, some of the members of the assembly waited on Gosford, and requested him to stop the remittance of about £3000 which was being made by Stayner to the department in England.

Gosford declined to take such a step for reasons which he set forth. The members, also, asked that the governor should take measures to recover from Stayner the sums which he was shown to have taken as newspaper postage. Gosford replied that as this allowance was permitted by the imperial department, and had been sanctioned by the Duke of Richmond as late as 1831, he could not assume to do what they asked, but he would bring the subject to the attention of the home government.

The whole arrangement regarding newspapers appeared to Gosford to be improper. He was of opinion that the emoluments received by Stayner were unreasonably large, and that the practice of allowing the deputy postmaster general to draw a considerable private income from the public business was wrong in principle.

But the post office in London was already in possession of the Lower Canadian bill. Stayner had sent a copy to the secretary immediately on its adoption by the assembly, and before the legislative council had had time to consider and reject it.

At the post office the receipt of the bill with the notice that it would go into operation on the 1st of May, 1836, gave rise to great perturbation among the officials. Freeling, in passing the bill on to the postmaster general, declared it to be perhaps the most important document he had ever received.[250]It was neither more nor less than an entire suppression of the postmaster general's patent, and of the powers of an act of parliament, authorizing the levying of certain rates of postage and the payment of the amount of all such postages into His Majesty's exchequer.

Freeling was a very old man—he was born in 1764—on the point of retiring from the charge, which he had held for forty-five years, and it may be that he had forgotten that four years before, the law officers had given it as their opinion that there was no act of parliament giving the postmaster general authority overthe colonial post office and postages. At Freeling's instance the postmaster general hastened to put the matter into the hands of Glenelg, the colonial secretary. Having taken time to consider the situation, the colonial office drew up a statement of the subject for the attention of the postmaster general.[251]

Observing that the assembly of Lower Canada, not being satisfied with the imperial bill of 1834, had drawn up a bill of their own, and that the legislative council, in declining to approve of this bill, had asked the intervention of the home government with the British parliament, the colonial secretary stated that the British government was not prepared to accede to this proposition.

By the act of 1834, the regulation of the post office in the several colonies was referred to the local legislatures, and His Majesty's government, the colonial office concluded, could not call in the authority of the imperial parliament for the solution of any difficulties that may arise until it could be shown conclusively that there were no other means of settling them; and then it would be only with the concurrence of the legislatures to whom the matter had been submitted.

But while determined that, in matters involving legislation, the colonies should be left to work out their own salvation, the colonial secretary observed that there were certain matters within the competence of the postmaster general which, if given effect to, would ameliorate the situation.

The legislative council had among their requests asked (1) that all information required by the legislature should be furnished; (2) that the accounts of receipts and expenditures should be laid before the legislature annually; (3) that the officers of the department should be placed on moderate fixed salaries, in lieu of all perquisites and fees.

These objects, Glenelg pointed out, would have been to a certain degree attained by the bill of 1834. But as it had not become law, no time should be lost in putting these changes into effect, as they did not require legislative sanction. The colonial secretary also animadverted on the emoluments of Stayner. These he considered entirely excessive, and besides they were levied on an objectionable principle. The postmaster general was requested to put an end forthwith to the receipt by the deputy postmaster general of any fees on account of the transmission of newspapers. His salary should not be excessive.

As a guide to the postmaster general in fixing it, the colonialsecretary gave a list of the salaries of the principal officers in the colony. Omitting that of the governor general, the highest salary in Canada was that of the receiver general which was £1000 a year. No other salary exceeded £500 a year. As against these, Stayner's emoluments of £3185 for each of the three preceding years were out of all proportion.

Glenelg further impressed upon the postmaster general the anxiety of His Majesty's government that no time should be lost in removing any real grievances which might be shown to exist. The postmaster general concurred with Glenelg as to the necessity of removing all reasonable grounds of complaint, and stated that steps had been, or were about to be, taken to that end.

To the postmaster general the newspaper postage question was one of real difficulty, in view of the absence of necessary legislation. As matters stood, newspapers could only be sent as letters or under the deputy postmaster general's privilege. If the law officers could see any way out of the difficulty, the postmaster general would be glad to adopt it.

As the law officers' ingenuity was not equal to the difficulty, the situation remained essentially unchanged for some years. Meantime Stayner was enjoying to the full the peace and quiet which followed upon the altered conditions in the two provincial assemblies. It was some years since he had heard a complimentary reference to himself in either house, though no man could have shown more zeal for the improvement of the service he administered.

But an agreeable change was at hand. On February 17, 1837, the legislative council of Upper Canada had before it the report of a committee it had appointed to inquire into the post office. The chairman of the committee was John Macaulay, formerly postmaster of Kingston, and Stayner's chief support in Upper Canada. When there was a question of appointing an assistant deputy postmaster general for Upper Canada, it was Macaulay that Stayner desired for the position.

The burden of the report of the committee of the council of 1837 was that the interests of the several provinces could be maintained only by preserving to the post office its character as an imperial institution. In Stayner's hands the service would be carried on efficiently, now that he had been furnished with the assistance he had applied for. Indeed the magnitude of his labour could be understood only by those connected with the service.

The committee drew up a series of conditions which they consideredwould place the institution on an efficient footing. The conditions were very similar to those suggested by the legislative council of Lower Canada in 1836. The bill of the Lower Canadian assembly appeared to the committee to illustrate the impracticability of any scheme such as that proposed by the imperial government in 1834.

If the acceptance of a post office bill was left to the provincial legislatures, they would almost certainly insist upon a scheme of low rates, based entirely on local considerations. The excessively reduced scale of rates proposed by the Lower Canadian assembly could not fail to leave a large deficit. Hence the wisdom of leaving the rates as they stood until their effects could be seen.

Ten days after the committee of the legislative council made its report, the house of assembly adopted an address to the king, in which the same ideas were embodied, and in the following month a joint address was prepared by the assembly and the legislative council.[252]

The address began with a recital of the facts making up the existing situation, and then proceeded to an effective criticism of the imperial scheme of 1834. It pointed out that the colonial secretary had stated that, in order to conform to the imperial plans, a uniformity of views should pervade the bills passed by the several provinces; that a careful consideration of the bill prepared for the acceptance of the provinces, and of the action taken upon it in the province discloses no reasonable grounds for the hope that the legislatures would soon (if indeed ever) arrive at such uniformity as would ensure the establishment of a practicable system.

Even if such unanimity on the terms of a bill were reached, it would doubtless happen frequently, the committee conceived, that amendments in this bill would be necessary, but as all the legislatures would have to be convinced of the necessity of the amendments which seemed desirable or even indispensable to any one of them, the difficulties in the way of making needful alterations to meet the changing conditions in progressive communities would be insuperable.

These conditions led inevitably to the conclusion on the part of the committee that the only means of securing a practicable system in which all interests, provincial and imperial, would be considered, was to maintain the supremacy of the British post office, and to continue to entrust to it the supreme power ofmaking laws and regulations for the management of the post office in the several provinces. The interests of the provincial legislatures would be amply safeguarded, the committee was confident, if their demands for information respecting the post office were acceded to, and if it were understood that complaints against the deputy postmaster general, preferred by petition to the legislature and supported by the joint address of the two houses, would have the attention of the postmaster general in London.

The turn which affairs had taken was naturally gratifying to Stayner, who urged the postmaster general to give careful heed to the terms of the joint address, which, if carried into effect, would, in his opinion, provide a remedy for all warranted dissatisfaction.

The secretary of the post office did not share Stayner's hopefulness. He observed to the postmaster general that, however desirable uniformity of system might be in the post offices of British North America, the success of any act of the imperial parliament would be jeopardized, if it involved the imposition of a tax upon the colonies. The secretary was prepared, however, to listen to any suggestion Stayner might have to make in the way of improving the existing system.

Although Stayner's friends were in control of both legislative chambers in Upper Canada, his peace of mind on that account was not of long duration. In April 1837, both houses passed a franking act, under which the members were authorized to send their letters free, during the sittings of the legislature. This act, as Stayner pointed out to the postmaster general, subverted the imperial acts, upon which the existence of the post office depended, and he was placed in a very awkward situation.

Stayner, according to his letter to the postmaster general, had either to violate the instructions from St. Martins-le-Grand or to bring himself into collision with both the legislature and the executive. This act appeared to Stayner to be a fresh illustration of the unfitness of local legislatures to deal with an institution like the post office. If part of the revenues could be withheld, as would be the case where members did not pay their postage, any of the legislatures might, by passing an act for the purpose, oblige him to pay into the local treasury the whole of the revenue which came into his hands, or it might in any other way supersede the laws of the British parliament.

The bill had received the assent of the governor. Constitutionallyit had thereby become an act. But on Stayner's remonstrance the governor admitted to the colonial office that he should not have given his sanction to it. The act was disallowed by the home government.

The question of franking the correspondence of the provincial governments and of the members of the legislatures was one upon which the legislatures in the several provinces had particularly strong convictions. For a considerable period before 1837, the legislatures of Upper and Lower Canada had not paid their accounts for postage.

The account against Upper Canada, which amounted to £1629, was paid in the beginning of 1837; while the account against Lower Canada was not paid until after the dissolution of the last assembly at the time of the rebellion. It amounted to £4043.

The governor general, Gosford, in reporting the payment of the account of Lower Canada, suggested to the colonial secretary that the sum might be remitted as an act of grace on the part of the imperial government, and he urged that if the home government should not feel warranted in making this concession in its entirety, the correspondence of the governor general and his civil secretary, which embraced all the executive business of the province, might be exempt from postage charges.

Gosford's suggestions were in harmony with the whole character of his administration. Indeed his persistence in his policy of conciliation brought down upon him the distrust of the ultra-Loyalists.

Stayner, to whom Gosford's suggestion was referred, opposed it vigorously. If, he argued, this concession were made to Lower Canada, immediate demands of the same character would be made by the other provinces. This would be followed by requests for the free transmission of members' correspondence, and the post office would speedily find itself in a deficit.

It would be specially inadvisable to grant this privilege to Lower Canada, Stayner averred, as the postage received from that province, after deducting the British packet postage, which was the admitted due of the British post office, barely sufficed to pay the expenses of the service in the province. The revenues from Upper Canada exceeded the expenses by a considerable sum, and any extension of the advantages now enjoyed by Lower Canada, would be at the expense of the upper province.

The first of the annual statements of revenue and expenditure for which the legislatures had been contending for many years waspresented to the legislatures on the 17th of January, 1838. The statement contained an undivided account of the operations in Upper and Lower Canada. This was not quite satisfactory to the house in Upper Canada, but as the services for the conveyance of the mails ran from one province into the other, it was impossible to assign accurately to each province its share of the expense for their maintenance.

As the statement showed a surplus of £11,264 for the years 1836-1837, the legislature of Upper Canada saw no reason for hesitating to press its demand that the franking privilege be granted to its members. They went, indeed, much further, and asked that the whole amount of the surplus revenue, which arose from the post office business in Upper Canada, be transferred to them.

In support of their request, the legislature pointed out that, in the imperial act of 1834, it was provided that as soon as the consent of His Majesty should be signified to the bills of the several colonial legislatures, the net revenue from the post office in British North America should be distributed among the several provinces in the proportion indicated by their gross revenues; that the suspension of the legislature in Lower Canada, in consequence of the rebellion, made it impossible to procure joint legislative enactments; and the financial condition of Upper Canada made it necessary that the province should have at its disposal all the means to which it was legally entitled.

The terms of this memorial were entirely in accord with Stayner's views as to the proper settlement of this long standing difficulty, and he urged the postmaster general to do what was possible to give effect to the petition. He pointed out that, with Mackenzie and Papineau out of the country, and fugitives from justice, there was no further disposition on the part of the legislatures to wrest from the imperial post office the control of the postal systems in the provinces, and that the appropriation of the surplus revenues to provincial purposes removed the only valid argument against existing arrangements.

The postmaster general, however, was not to be moved from the position he had taken. He replied to the address stating that no disposition could be made of the surplus post office revenues, until the several colonial governments had come to an agreement on the subject.

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