[251] June 6, 1836 (Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, VI.).
[252] Journals of Assembly, 1837, p. 580.
CHAPTER XII
Durham's report on the post office—Effects of rebellion of 1837 on the service—Ocean steamships to carry the mails—The Cunard contract—Reduction of Transatlantic postage.
The long controversy which had agitated the legislatures of the provinces was approaching its end. The decision on the constitutional point was given in their favour, though they did not know it; but the specific thing for which they had contended, they were constrained to relinquish.
The Upper Canada legislature which had commenced the agitation, and elaborated the argument against the constitutional standing of the British post office in the colonies, had become convinced that the provincial system, which they demanded, was not in the interest of either the mother country or the colonies. They therefore asked the British government to put the stamp of legality on the existing system, by suitable legislation in the imperial parliament.
But the argument of Upper Canada had done its work too well, and it became the turn of the British government to employ it, to show the impossibility of meeting the desires of Upper Canada. The difficulty now, however, was not one of principle, but of ways and means.
The British government were quite willing that the colonial legislatures should have full information as to the financial operations of their post offices, and that the surplus revenue, if any, should be divided among them. All they required was that the colonial legislatures should by concurrent action devise the means by which the ends in view might be effected. The British parliament was, in the opinion of the law officers, precluded from interposing its authority in the settlement of the difficulty.