The administration of the posts rested ultimately with the Postmasters-General in London. The service could be extended only by their authority, and the colonists found that the Deputy in the colonies, being bound by his instructions from the Postmasters-General, was unable to extend and improve the service in the manner which they themselves thought desirable. A large number of immigrants entered the provinces, especially Upper Canada, during this period, and settlements were springing up in remote districts far away from the post routes. Heriot was admonished from London that in considering the provision of new services he must look to the revenue to be anticipated as well as to the convenience of the public, and to adopt no scheme involving sacrifice of revenue. His instructions forbade the opening of any post office or post route unless the anticipated revenue was sufficient at least to pay the postmaster and courier. He found that these restrictions prevented him from providing a service in any degree adequate to the demands of the settlers, or indeed adequate to their real needs. It was essential that the settlers in the remote districts should be kept in touch with civilization. They could not be allowed to pass beyond the reach of the Government. They must be kept in contact with the means provided for the administration of the law.
For these reasons it was essential to provide post accommodation, although in the nature of the case it could not be expected that a revenue sufficient to cover the cost would be obtained. All these considerations were pressed on the Deputy, and he was so far persuaded as sometimes, in response to urgent local representations, to depart from his specific instructions. But such cases usually led to a reprimand. The natural result was that the province was driven itself to undertake by grants from the public funds the provision of many local services which it deemed essential.
Thus grew up the anomalous system under which the colonies made large grants in aid of the service, but were unable to exercise any substantial control over its administration. The more important routes were self-supporting and were controlled entirely from England. In order to obtain extensions of the service the colonists, through the Governor, requested the establishment of certain services, undertaking that, if the revenue derived from these services should prove insufficient to meet the expenditure, the balance should be made up by the colony. A regular post was established in 1801 between Quebec and York (Toronto) under a guarantee of this kind. The colonists naturally wished to have some controlling voice in the administration; but the Deputy, holding office under the Imperial authorities, was not bound to concede to them any rights over the administration of the service, however great sums they might pay towards its maintenance—a situation which was sure to lead to difficulties. Whether or not serious trouble occurred depended in large degree on the character of the Deputy.[110] In later years there was considerable friction and much irritation on the part of the colonists.
In Nova Scotia the system of grants in aid was developed to an even greater extent than in Upper Canada. When Sir George Provost became Governor in 1808, there were only five post offices in Nova Scotia—Halifax, Windsor, Horton, Annapolis, and Digby—and they were all on the line of the Quebec post. Sir George was anxious for an extension of the posts on military rather than general grounds, and he asked the postmaster of Halifax, John
Howe, to establish several new routes. Howe was inclined to favour the projected posts, but Heriot realized that they could not be expected to yield a revenue equal to their cost, and he informed the Governor that his instructions from England prevented compliance with the request. Sir George Provost thereupon induced the Legislature to appropriate a sufficient sum for the establishment of the posts. The Governors of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island followed this example, with the result that a large part of the Post Office establishment in these provinces was outside the jurisdiction of the Imperial authorities.
This development is noteworthy. It has always been found in Canada that for a large part of the country the circumstances are such that a postal service adequate to the necessities of the inhabitants cannot be self-supporting, but the Legislature has never hesitated to make grants from general taxation in order to provide means of communication. In the early days the question of post office communication was intimately bound up with the question of general means of communication, and was usually treated in connection with the making or maintenance of roads. For a long period the posts in Canada were maintained not solely for the transmission of letters, but to a great extent on account of collateral advantages. They were largely military in character, and were identified with the military routes.[111]
In 1816 Daniel Sutherland was appointed Deputy Postmaster-General for Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. Under his administration the development of the service was pushed forward, and so far as was found consistent with the interests of revenue, new offices and routes were established. But in 1820 there were still no more than forty-nine post offices in the whole of British North America, distributed thus: in Lower Canada twenty offices, in Upper
Canada nineteen, in Nova Scotia six, in New Brunswick three, and in Prince Edward Island one. The progress was from this time somewhat more rapid. By 1824 the number of offices in the Canadas alone had risen to sixty-nine, and during the next ten or fifteen years the growth, both of Post Office accommodation and of Post Office revenue, was more rapid than the growth of population.
The settlers were not, however, completely satisfied. Their complaints were to some extent laid against the administration of the office—they claimed, for example, that gross overcharges of postage were being made, through incorrect computation of the distances on the post roads—but they became more and more dissatisfied that the control of the whole of the service and its officers should rest with the Postmaster-General in England. The question was, of course, to a large extent political, and one only among the several general grievances of the colonists at this period, which caused so much anxiety to the Home authorities.
As early as 1819 a movement began in Upper Canada to obtain the transference of the administration to the provincial authorities. A Committee of the House of Assembly considered the abuses of the existing Post Office system, and on presentation of their report, in March 1820, the House passed a resolution condemning the administration of the service. The question continued to receive a good deal of attention. The chief complaint of the colonists was that a net revenue was year by year transmitted to London. There is no doubt that a balance was paid over to the Imperial administration year by year, but it is questionable whether any of this balance was a net revenue on the local service.[112] The colonists chose so to regard it. They advanced the contention that the legal right of the Imperial Government to levy postage rates in the colonies at all was doubtful, because postage was a tax; and the raising of money by authorities outside the colonies was a direct infringement of their own constitution, which provides that "no tax shall be levied on the people of this country except such as shall be appropriated for the public use and accounted for by the Legislature,"[113] and of the Declaratory Act, in which Great Britain disclaimed the