The History of the Post Office in British North America

by William Smith

The house of assembly argued that this act, which by later acts was declared to be in force in Canada, applied to the people of England, Ireland and colonies of North America and in the West Indies. The word "public," therefore, being used without limitation, or qualification, could not signify exclusively the people of Great Britain and Ireland, or of the colonies. On the contrary, being equally applicable to all who were within the purview of the act, it designated the people of all the dominions of the crown in which the postal revenue was to be levied. The statute thus carried on the face of it a parliamentary declaration that the colonies were entitled to a share of the post office revenues, and it enacted, by implication, that the amount of the share should be determined by parliament at some future period.

Here followed a novel and ingenious application of the statute of 1778, which was enacted for the purpose of conciliating the colonies by conceding the point at issue between them and the mother country.

The assembly stated that by this act it was declared that, for the peace and welfare of His Majesty's dominions, the net produce of all duties, which after the passing of that act were imposed by parliament upon the colonies, should be applied to the use of the colony in which it is levied. Unlike the assembly of Upper Canada, the assembly of Lower Canada did not maintain that the act of Queen Anne was annulled by the act of 1778.

It will be remembered that the British post office rested its claim to collect the colonial postages on Queen Anne's act with its amendments, while the Upper Canada assembly asserted that the act of 1778, which was made part of the constitutional act of 1791, deprived the British government of any right it formerly had to impose a tax on the colonies.

The Lower Canadian house of assembly made another use of the act of 1778. It submitted that, so far as postal revenues were concerned, it was the complement of the act of Queen Anne. The earlier act, in the view of the assembly, left the amounts of the shares of the postal revenues to which the colonies were entitled, to be determined by a future act of parliament, and the act of 1778 had this effect, if not in the letter, at least in its spirit; and consequently Lower Canada, as one of the colonies had a fair and equitable claim to the net produce of the post office revenue levied within the province, after deducting the expenses of the post office established therein.

Shortly before the house of assembly at York took into its consideration the question of the legality of the postal system in operation in Upper Canada, the home authorities were discussing a matter, which was a source of much embarrassment to the deputy postmaster general. The steamboats, which had been running since 1809, between Montreal and Quebec, had so far improved that they outdistanced the mail couriers, who travelled on the shore of the river, and a great many letters were carried between the two towns by the steamers.

The deputy postmaster general made provision for the conveyance of letters by steamers, by placing official letter boxes on the boats. He allowed the captains twopence for each letter they carried, and charged the public the regular postage rates. But the public paid little attention to the letter boxes. They simply threw their letters on a table in the cabin, and when the steamer reached its destination, those expecting letters sent down to the landing and got them, paying a small gratuity to the captain.

Moreover, in cases where the letters had been deposited in the letter boxes on the steamer, and were delivered by the captain at the post office, many of the people to whom the letters were addressed refused to pay the same charges as if the letters were conveyed by land, alleging that such charges were illegal.

The deputy postmaster general laid the facts before his superiors in England in 1819, asking for some document of an authoritative character, which, when published, would put a stop to the illegal practices. The solicitor of the post office to whom the matter was referred had no doubt that the acts complained of were illegal, and would render the offenders liable to penalties, if the practice were carried on in England, but he could not be sure that penalties for the infraction of the post office act could be recovered in Canada.

Freeling, the secretary, thereupon made a suggestion[210] which must have caused him some pain. The right of the post office to protect its monopoly was quite clear, and the natural course of the postmaster general would be to direct his deputy in Canada to enforce the law. But as the legislatures had in several instances manifested an inclination to interfere with the internal posts, he recommended that, instead of taking proceedings to protect His Majesty's revenues, and, as he says, to enable them to continue to flow into the exchequer of the United Kingdom, the postmaster general should state the circumstances to the colonial secretary, and request his opinion before instructions were sent out to the deputy postmaster general.