“‘Your Excellency’s most obedient servant,

“‘Charles Connell.’

“This finishes this most remarkable correspondence and chapter in the postal history of New Brunswick.

“A careful reading and consideration of the letters here given will show the impossibility of there ever having been any of the Connell stamps used to pay the postage of a letter, although an inference to the contrary may be drawn from Nos. 5 and 9, being the letters of the Executive Council, but this is due I think to loose writing, or probably meaning that they were in the hands of the Post Office Department for distribution. Against this we see the telegrams to Connell forbidding the issue, three days before they were to start sending them to postmasters, and his telegram to Hale, the Secretary of the Post Office Department of N. B., at Fredericton, forbidding him to send out any of the stamps. In my opinion the Connell is undoubtedly not a postage stamp, but a rare essay only. As a fitting end to this I may add the official account of the money paid for the making of the Cent issue of New Brunswick.

NAME.PARTICULARS.AMOUNT.AMOUNT.
£s.d.£.s.d.
Engraving plate for “One Cent”Postage Stamps2500
Printing 2000 sheets ”1215037150
Engraving plate for “Five Cent” (Connell)do.2500
Printing 5000 sheets ” ”31 15056150
Engraving plate for “Ten Cent”2500
Printing 2000 sheets ”1210037100
Engraving plate for “Twelve & Half Cent”2500
Printing 4000 sheets ” ”25005000
Engraving plate for “Seventeen Cent”2500
Printing 1000 sheets ”6503150
Engraving plate for “Five Cent”2500
Printing 5000 sheets ”31505650
£268150

“This was for the first lot sent. There were, however, several other supplies got before the confederation of the British North American Provinces.

“Donald A. King.”

Issue III. May (?), 1863.

One value.—Engraved and printed by the American Bank Note Co. of New York, upon white wove paper; brownish gum, machine-perforated 12. The entire sheet consists of one hundred stamps, arranged in ten rows of ten; and the name of the engravers appears in the margins of the sheet. Design: The same portrait of the Queen as in the Five Cents of the last issue, in a somewhat larger oval. Upright coloured ovals in each corner, containing Arabic numeral of value in white. The remainder of the stamp is filled in with arabesques. Shape, small upright rectangular. ([Illustration 58.])

T. “NEW BRUNSWICK POSTAGE.” B. “TWO CENTS.”