The History of the Post Office in British North America

by William Smith

But Armour persisted in his attacks in the Gazette, and in the two sessions which followed managed to alienate from Stayner a large measure of the good will of the house of assembly. Stayner's determination to withhold information from the assembly was a source of irritation. The facts which had come to their knowledge through questions in the house of commons at Westminster, the ungracious admissions which the possession of these facts enabled the house to extort from Stayner, and his specious and unconvincing defence of his perquisites, all combined to change the house from an attitude of friendliness to one of criticism and even hostility.

The house no longer rested in the belief that, to obtain satisfaction, all that was necessary was to lay their grievances before the department. In 1832, it denounced the methods of the department, and presented an address to the governor general praying that the home government might place the post office under the control of the legislature.[217]

In the session of 1833, the pertinacious Armour again appeared before the assembly. He had no new facts to present, but managed to sustain the interest of the house in the facts already before it.

The assembly on this occasion set forth its views at greater length. In an address to the king,[218] it represented that the post office should not be a means of raising a revenue greater than was needed to enable it to establish offices wherever they might be required; that if the rates were higher than was necessary for that purpose they should be lowered; and that any surplus revenue should be at the disposition of the legislature for the improvement of communications by post throughout the country; also, that newspapers should pass through the post office in Lower Canada, free of postage.

In the assembly in Upper Canada the post office was also vigorously assailed. There was general agreement on the proposition that the existing arrangements were not satisfactory, but on the point of remedy opinions differed sharply. The reformers, of whom Dr. Duncombe was the spokesman, adopting the argument of the Baldwin committee of 1821, insisted that the post office had no legal basis in Upper Canada.

Duncombe and his associates held that it was a violation of the constitution to send any surplus revenue to Great Britain, and that it was the obvious duty of the legislature to pass an act, taking to itself the control of the provincial post office. They believed that the revenues from the service would amply suffice to cover all its expenses, but if it should turn out that such was not the case, they were prepared to meet the deficiency from the general revenues of the province.

The government party, on the other hand, always ready to fight for things as they were, did not accept the argument of the Baldwin committee. They held that the post office was an institution necessary to commerce, and, as such, it was not placed by the acts of 1778 and 1791 under the jurisdiction of the provincial legislature. They did not believe that the provincial post office furnished a revenue sufficient to cover the expenses, but if it should be shown that they were wrong, and that the post office yielded a surplus, they were convinced that the imperial government had no desire to retain the surplus for its own purposes.

Colborne, the lieutenant governor, was in general agreement with the government party. But he believed that, having regard to the great distances between Quebec, and the rapidly rising settlements in the remoter parts of Upper Canada, an administrator, having his headquarters at Quebec could never understand the necessities of the new districts, and that it was indispensable that there should be stationed at Toronto an officer with powers nearly, if not quite, equal to those of the deputy postmaster general at Quebec.

In the sessions of 1832 and 1833, the subject was warmly debated.[219] The views of the reformers were presented by Duncombe and Bidwell. They were opposed by the attorney general (Henry John Boulton), the solicitor general (Christopher Hagerman), and Burwell, who was postmaster at Port Burwell.

It was one of the complaints of the reformers that there were in the house of assembly a number of postmasters who voted not according to their own convictions, but according to the orders of Stayner.