The History of the Post Office in British North America

by William Smith

The petition was handed over to a committee of the house, who proceeded to investigate the facts. In this they were only moderately successful, as the only person who was in a position to give them the information they desired, declined to answer the interrogatories put to him.[216]

Stayner, in reply to inquiries as to the financial condition of the post office and the disposition of the surplus revenues, pleaded that he was employed by a branch of the imperial government, which in none of its instructions had recognized the right of the assembly to institute the inquiries being made. To answer the questions put to him by the committee might lead to disclosures, which would involve him with his superior officers until he had received specific instructions from them on the point.

But though little was learned from Stayner, the committee had obtained some useful information from inquiries made in the British house of commons by Joseph Hume. It appeared that the large sum of £36,000 had been received by the British treasury as surplus revenue for the years 1825 and 1826.

Stayner endeavoured to lessen the importance of this fact by declaring that more than half the amount was postage paid by the army, which was not properly chargeable with postage at all. The committee declined to accept this view; and while perfectly friendly to Stayner, and admitting that he had effected some considerable improvements, they were persuaded that the service was far from being what the people had a right to expect.

Looking outwards from Quebec, the committee observed that there was no postal service whatever in the counties of Montmorency and Saguenay, which embraced the earliest settlements in the country. On the south shore of the St. Lawrence, and along the Etchemin and Chaudiere rivers, there was a wide stretch of well-settled country entirely lacking the means of communication with the capital, though but a short distance from it.

From Quebec eastward to the New Brunswick boundary there were over 100,000 people, and the only postal accommodation for this great extent of territory was afforded by seven post offices lying along the line of the post route between Quebec and Halifax. The peninsula of Gaspe, with a line of fishing settlements all along the coast, had but two mails each year.

The committee regretted particularly the situation as regards the conveyance of newspapers. The post office was under no legal obligation to carry them except as letters, and yet there was no other means available for their circulation. If the law had not conferred on the post office a monopoly of carrying letters, the publishers would have a resource. They might establish a transportation system, and meet their expenses by carrying letters as well as newspapers.

The secrecy with which the affairs of the post office were surrounded was much deprecated by the committee, as giving ground for speculation and suspicion that could not fail to do harm to the institution. If, under the present system of imperial control, an adequate service were rendered, there would have been no just grounds for complaint.

But if the interests of the province were not regarded, the people were entitled to object to their being limited to a means of conveyance which did not meet their requirements, and to assume that the revenue arising from the service was not properly applied. The committee in conclusion expressed their confidence in the good will of both the postmaster general and his deputy in Canada, and their belief that their complaint had only to be laid before the governor general to secure favourable consideration.

Before concluding to withhold from the house of assembly, the information it sought, Stayner with characteristic prudence had enlisted the support of the governor general, who coincided with him in his view as to the impropriety of his submitting to the questioning of the house regarding the affairs of a branch of the imperial service. When he laid the course he had pursued before the postmaster general, Stayner also gained his approval for the zeal and sagacity he had shown.