The History of the Post Office in British North America

by William Smith

The committee drew up a series of conditions which they considered would place the institution on an efficient footing. The conditions were very similar to those suggested by the legislative council of Lower Canada in 1836. The bill of the Lower Canadian assembly appeared to the committee to illustrate the impracticability of any scheme such as that proposed by the imperial government in 1834.

If the acceptance of a post office bill was left to the provincial legislatures, they would almost certainly insist upon a scheme of low rates, based entirely on local considerations. The excessively reduced scale of rates proposed by the Lower Canadian assembly could not fail to leave a large deficit. Hence the wisdom of leaving the rates as they stood until their effects could be seen.

Ten days after the committee of the legislative council made its report, the house of assembly adopted an address to the king, in which the same ideas were embodied, and in the following month a joint address was prepared by the assembly and the legislative council.[252]

The address began with a recital of the facts making up the existing situation, and then proceeded to an effective criticism of the imperial scheme of 1834. It pointed out that the colonial secretary had stated that, in order to conform to the imperial plans, a uniformity of views should pervade the bills passed by the several provinces; that a careful consideration of the bill prepared for the acceptance of the provinces, and of the action taken upon it in the province discloses no reasonable grounds for the hope that the legislatures would soon (if indeed ever) arrive at such uniformity as would ensure the establishment of a practicable system.

Even if such unanimity on the terms of a bill were reached, it would doubtless happen frequently, the committee conceived, that amendments in this bill would be necessary, but as all the legislatures would have to be convinced of the necessity of the amendments which seemed desirable or even indispensable to any one of them, the difficulties in the way of making needful alterations to meet the changing conditions in progressive communities would be insuperable.

These conditions led inevitably to the conclusion on the part of the committee that the only means of securing a practicable system in which all interests, provincial and imperial, would be considered, was to maintain the supremacy of the British post office, and to continue to entrust to it the supreme power of making laws and regulations for the management of the post office in the several provinces. The interests of the provincial legislatures would be amply safeguarded, the committee was confident, if their demands for information respecting the post office were acceded to, and if it were understood that complaints against the deputy postmaster general, preferred by petition to the legislature and supported by the joint address of the two houses, would have the attention of the postmaster general in London.

The turn which affairs had taken was naturally gratifying to Stayner, who urged the postmaster general to give careful heed to the terms of the joint address, which, if carried into effect, would, in his opinion, provide a remedy for all warranted dissatisfaction.

The secretary of the post office did not share Stayner's hopefulness. He observed to the postmaster general that, however desirable uniformity of system might be in the post offices of British North America, the success of any act of the imperial parliament would be jeopardized, if it involved the imposition of a tax upon the colonies. The secretary was prepared, however, to listen to any suggestion Stayner might have to make in the way of improving the existing system.

Although Stayner's friends were in control of both legislative chambers in Upper Canada, his peace of mind on that account was not of long duration. In April 1837, both houses passed a franking act, under which the members were authorized to send their letters free, during the sittings of the legislature. This act, as Stayner pointed out to the postmaster general, subverted the imperial acts, upon which the existence of the post office depended, and he was placed in a very awkward situation.

Stayner, according to his letter to the postmaster general, had either to violate the instructions from St. Martins-le-Grand or to bring himself into collision with both the legislature and the executive. This act appeared to Stayner to be a fresh illustration of the unfitness of local legislatures to deal with an institution like the post office. If part of the revenues could be withheld, as would be the case where members did not pay their postage, any of the legislatures might, by passing an act for the purpose, oblige him to pay into the local treasury the whole of the revenue which came into his hands, or it might in any other way supersede the laws of the British parliament.