[104] Preamble of 5 Geo. III, cap. 25.
[105] "The present rates may in some parts be reduced, and the Revenue nevertheless may hereafter be improved, by means of a more extensive circulation."—5 Geo. III, cap. 25, § 1.
[106] British Official Records, 8th February 1774.
[107] British Official Records, 23rd September 1790.
[108] J. G. Hendy, Empire Review, London, 1902, vol. iv., p. 180.
[109] "There is no doubt that the revenues of the provinces showed a nominal surplus, but it is not so clear that this surplus, which amounted to £884 in 1801, and to £2,514 in 1811, was a surplus on the provincial services. Many years later, when the administration of the Post Office in the colonies and the question of the disposal of the surplus revenue had become part of a political matter of the first magnitude, the provincial Legislatures alleged that the surplus amounted to a very considerable sum each year, and that the circumstances constituted a taxation of the colonies by the Mother Country; but the Deputy Postmaster-General asserted that this surplus was in fact composed of revenues to which the colonies had no claim, viz. the charges for British packet postage, that is, for transmission of letters across the ocean, and payments in respect of military postage, and that in point of fact the local service had never yielded a surplus—that, indeed, there was probably a deficit.
"This I feel myself bound to state as my firm conviction, that neither for the last ten years, nor for any previous period, has the postage of Lower Canada afforded one farthing of Net Revenue."—Mr. T. A. Stayner, Deputy Postmaster-General (Report of Special Committee of the House of Assembly on the Post Office Department in the Province of Lower Canada, 11th February 1832, p. 12).
[110] See, e.g., Report of Special Committee, House of Assembly, Lower Canada, 8th March 1836.
[111] In 1790 Governor Carleton of New Brunswick manned the posts at St. John, Cumberland, Preguile, and Fredericton with a troop of soldiers, by which means "the route was kept in good order"; and in 1794 the Duke of Kent, then Commander-in-Chief of the forces in Nova Scotia, constructed a military post road from Halifax to Annapolis, and also other roads in the vicinity of Halifax.—British America (British Empire Series, vol. iii., London, 1900), p. 121.