A FEW FACTS ABOUT THE POST OFFICE IN CANADA.
COMPILED FROM AUTHENTIC SOURCES.
The earliest records of the administration of the post office in Canada bear date 1750, at which period the celebrated Benjamin Franklin was Deputy Postmaster General of North America. At the time of his appointment the revenue of the department was insufficient to defray his salary of £300 per annum; but under his judicious management not only was the postal accommodation in the Provinces considerably extended, but the revenue so greatly increased, that ere long the profit for one year, which he remitted to the British treasury, amounted to £3000.
In the evidence given by Franklin before the British House of Commons in the year 1766, in regard to the extent of the post office accommodation in North America, he made the following statement:—
"The posts generally travel along the sea coasts, and only in a few cases do they go back into the country. Between Quebec and Montreal there is only one post per month. The inhabitants live so scattered and remote from each other in that vast country that the posts cannot be supported amongst them. The English colonies, too, along the frontier are very thinly settled."
Franklin was removed in 1774. War broke out a few months afterwards between the North American Provinces and the Mother Country; and the charge of the post office in Canada was assumed by Mr. Hugh Finlay, who, it appears, had under Franklin performed the duties of postmaster at Quebec.
Mr. Finlay is designated in his commission as Deputy Postmaster General of His Majesty's "Province of Canada," from which it would seem that the Lower Provinces were not included in his charge.
An Almanac published in Quebec in the year 1791 thus describes the condition of the Department:—