A. I have heard that there are no roads at all, but that the communication between one settlement and another is by sea only.
Q. Can you disperse the stamps by post in Canada?
A. There is only a post between Montreal and Quebec. The inhabitants live so scattered and remote from each other in that vast country, that posts cannot be supported among them, and therefore they cannot get stamps per post. The English colonies too along the frontiers are very thinly settled.
Q. From the thinness of the back settlements, would not the stamp act be extremely inconvenient to the inhabitants, if executed?
A. To be sure it would; as many of the inhabitants could not get stamps when they had occasion for them, without taking long journeys, and spending perhaps three or four pounds, that the crown might get six-pence.
Q. Are not the colonies, from their circumstances, very able to pay the stamp duty?
A. In my opinion there is not gold and silver enough in the colonies to pay the stamp duty for one year.[84]
Q. Don't you know that the money arising from the stamps was all to be laid out in America?