[313] "It may fairly be viewed in the same light as the amounts annually granted by the Legislature for roads and bridges, and for the support of common schools. The mail carriage to all parts of the province secures us the travelling public conveyance which would not otherwise exist, and the very large amount of newspapers, etc., which pass through the Post Office affords strong evidence that the Department may be considered a branch of our educational system."—Postmaster-General of New Brunswick, 1857.
[314] "Already they found a tax proposed on every poor man who took a newspaper for the information of his family; a stamp tax, an impost unknown in the Maritime Provinces, and one which had cost England half this continent."—Mr. Macdonald in Canadian House of Commons, 12th December 1867 (Ottawa Times).
[315] Sir John A. MacDonald in Canadian House of Commons, 20th December 1867, ibid.
[316] "If ever there was a time when it was necessary for the interests of the whole Dominion that just the sort of information which newspapers conveyed should be disseminated through all the Provinces, it was now."—Hon. Dr. Tupper in Canadian House of Commons, 20th December 1867 (Ottawa Times).
[317] Mr. Savary in Canadian House of Commons, 20th December 1867 (ibid.).
[318] Hon. Mr. Mackenzie in Canadian House of Commons, Parl. Debates, Canada (Commons), 22nd February 1875.
[319] "There was good reason for the enactment of the old law that made the rate for the carriage of newspapers a cent a pound, and there never was even a semblance of sense or reason or any request for the repeal of that law. The truth is that its repeal was a mere whim of a gentleman of the Senate, who, anxious to pose in the niche of personal popularity, jollied through Parliament a measure that has cost this country in postal rates millions of dollars, creating a big deficit in the spending department, which has stood in the way of reform every time a reform was proposed."—Mr. Ross Robertson, Parl. Debates, Canada (Commons), 13th May 1898.
[320] See Parl. Debates, Canada (Commons), 11th July 1900.
[321] The following remarks by Sir Charles Tupper in the Dominion House of Commons, though made at a somewhat later date, will illustrate this. He said: "There is abundant evidence that manhood suffrage in the Dominion is a far higher franchise than manhood suffrage in Great Britain, for the reason that there are tens of thousands of electors in the United Kingdom who go to the polls without having the remotest idea not only of public questions before the country, but, if their lives depended on it, they could not state who is the Prime Minister of Great Britain to-day. I give that as an indication of the great advance the people of Canada have made in intelligence; and the thorough knowledge which the mass of the people here have in respect of the political issues, and all other questions of that kind, as well as general information, rests largely on the fact that newspapers have so largely increased in circulation until they now reach almost every individual in the country."—Sir Charles Tupper, Parl. Debates, Canada (Commons), 13th May 1898.
[322] In Great Britain the figures are in very different proportion. While the letters are 3,500,000,000, the newspapers are only some 200,000,000. The circumstances of the two countries are in such contrast that the figures afford no basis for argument as regards the relative postage rates: but they illustrate very effectively a fundamental difference in the general character of the two postal services. In Great Britain the number of separate newspaper mails is extremely small proportionately to the number of letter mails. In Canada the proportions are almost reversed. The postmen on delivery in Great Britain carry their letters and packets in a light canvas bag, and the number of newspapers taken out by any one postman is quite small (the proportion is about one newspaper to twenty-five packets of other description). In Canada the letter-carriers are weighted with newspapers, carried either strapped in a bundle or stuck in a satchel which is full to overflowing. In effect, the general practical arrangements in Canada must be made largely with a view to the handling of vast quantities of newspapers, while in Great Britain the arrangements are in general based on letter traffic, and, except at the largest offices, the arrangements for newspapers are incidental. Letters, however, receive first consideration in Canada, and the discrimination in their favour against the newspaper matter, in point of promptness of handling, is carried to much greater lengths than in Great Britain.