The History of the Post Office in British North America

by William Smith

In the legislative council the bill was rejected. The majority of the council were Stayner's friends, and they saw that he had a full chance to express his views before a committee appointed by the council. He set the draft bill prepared by the postmaster general beside the assembly bill, and effectively contrasted the strong points of the former with the weakness of the latter.

The imperial bill, Stayner emphasised before the committee of the council, dealt with British North America as one territory as regards regulations and charges, and in his opinion, unless the several provinces were to be so regarded, an efficient service among the provinces themselves, and between the provinces and other countries, would be impossible.

In order to encourage correspondence between the distant parts of the colonies, the imperial bill fixed the comparatively low rate of eighteen pence for all distances beyond five hundred miles. Thus a letter could be sent from Amherstburg to Halifax or Charlottetown for that sum. If each colony had its own separate postal administration the charge on letters passing between those places would, in the most favourable circumstances, cost two or three times as much. Stayner was far from agreeing that, in all its details, the imperial bill was perfect, but he was convinced that the principle on which it was based was the only practicable one.

The great objection Stayner saw in the bill of the assembly was that it was a local bill operative only within the province. Intercourse between Lower Canada and the other provinces had to be provided for, since where there are several states under one supreme head, the free exchange of correspondence between them is indispensable.

The British government, whose interests in the different provinces required that communication between them and the mother country should be uninterrupted, could never consent, Stayner was sure, to any local arrangements by which those communications might be jeopardized. The cost of communication between province and province would be prohibitive, and the consequence would be moral isolation. The separate states of the American Union, jealous as they were of any impairment of their rights, recognized the necessity of a common postal service.

Stayner dwelt convincingly on the technical difficulties of accounting and distributing the charges on inter-provincial correspondence, and on correspondence between Canada and Great Britain. As it happened at the time, most of the letters sent between Canada and England passed by way of the United States. But that was a courtesy on the part of the United States government which might be terminated at any time, and then the Canadian provinces would be entirely dependent on the province by the sea.

If each province charged its full local rates on correspondence passing through it, and Stayner could see no reason why any of the provinces should favour its neighbours at the expense of its own people, the charge on a letter sent from Upper Canada to England would not be less than six or seven shillings, while under the British draft bill, the charge would scarcely ever exceed two shillings.

The legislative council adopted Stayner's reasoning entirely. It admitted that if the post office were an institution of merely local utility, there would be little to amend in the bill sent up by the assembly. Since, however, there were several provinces concerned, whose concurrent action was essential, the conflict of interest which must inevitably arise would make the harmonious working of the separate parts of the system difficult, if not impossible.

As an instance of the difficulties springing out of the divergence of interest among the provinces, the council recalled the fact that it became necessary to invite the intervention of the mother country to settle the apportionment of the customs revenues between the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada. The council suggested to the governor general that if this line of reasoning were found acceptable, a satisfactory settlement of the whole question would be reached by requiring the deputy postmaster general to furnish annually full information as to the conditions, financial and other, of the post office.

The free transmission of the correspondence of members of the legislature, the council urged, should be provided for. The deputy postmaster general should be removable on the joint address of the two houses of the legislature; the salaries of all officials should be fixed, and perquisites of every kind withdrawn. Finally such alterations should be made in the rates of postage, such post offices established and such arrangements adopted for the regulation and management of the service, as were called for by the joint address of the two houses.