The History of the Post Office in British North America

by William Smith

As for the objection to having the exchange of mails between Great Britain and Canada carried on through a foreign country, the publishers made light of it. The mails from England for India, were carried across the Continent through France and Italy; and there was no reason why the mails from England for Canada should not be carried through the United States.

These views were strongly presented by Stayner, and reinforced by the secretary of the post office, who laid them before the postmaster general. The Cunards also rendered assistance to the same end. They represented to the postmaster general that the service proved to be much more expensive than they had anticipated when they undertook the contract, and that the steamer on the St. Lawrence was a very heavy burden. In discussing the question of an increased subsidy, the company expressed their willingness to regard relief from the river service as equivalent to £10,000 a year.

These concurrent appeals, together with the fact that the change in the seat of government from Kingston to Montreal, established the governor in the city which would derive the maximum of benefit from the Boston connection, decided the government to make Boston the landing port for the Canadian mails; and the British minister at Washington was instructed to open negotiations for an arrangement by which the British mails would be permitted to cross the territory of the United States.[260]

It had long been an object of desire with the United States government to retain the hold its geographical situation has given it upon the correspondence between Great Britain and Canada. Before steam service was a practicable scheme, the president in a message to congress suggested that, to that end, the sailing packets should be put under post office regulations, and a greater degree of security to the mails thereby effected.

The United States government consequently were prepared to accept very moderate terms. They based their offer on the terms of the contract between the British and French governments for the conveyance of the Indian mails from Calais on the Channel to Marseilles on the Mediterranean. The British government paid the French government two francs per ounce of letters and ten centimes for each newspaper transmitted across French territory, and as the distance from Boston to St. Johns in Lower Canada was rather less than half that from Calais to Marseilles, they proposed that the British government should pay them half the rates paid to the French government.

These rates were regarded by the postmaster general of England as unusually favourable, and the proposal of the United States government was at once accepted. Under this arrangement, the postmaster general calculated that, besides the great saving in time that would be effected, there would be a reduction in the charges for the inland conveyance of the mails to and from Canada of £4600 per annum.

The course of conveyance across the territory of the United States was to be, in summer, from Boston to Burlington, Vermont, towards which a railway line was approaching completion, and from Burlington to St. Johns by steamer on lake Champlain. In the winter, the mails were to be carried from Boston to Highgate, Vermont, where they would be taken over by couriers attached to the Canadian post office. The time occupied would, under usual conditions, be forty-eight hours between Boston and St. Johns, and fifty-three hours between Boston and Highgate.

Thus was the great experiment brought to its appointed end. It had its origin in one of those imperial impulses, which seem to come most frequently from the colonies, and which now and then carry the Briton off his feet. But, as conditions stood, the scheme was foredoomed to failure. It was not until the construction of the Canadian Pacific railway in 1889, across the state of Maine between Montreal and St. John, that a Canadian ocean port was able to enter into successful competition with a United States port, as the point of exchange for mails passing between Great Britain and Canada.

While the plans for substituting steam for sailing vessels were being brought to maturity, the question of a substantial reduction in the postage between Great Britain and the colonies in North America were being discussed.[261] Stayner pointed out that it would be useless to enter upon an expensive scheme for reducing the time occupied in conveying the mails between Great Britain and Canada, unless the postage were brought down to a figure that would place the steamship service within reach of the farmers in western Canada.

As Sydenham observed, the new settlers, while living in great material comfort, had little money at their disposal. To them it was an impossibility to pay the postage—four shillings or more—which had accumulated on a letter on its way from the inland parts of the United Kingdom to the backwoods in which they were making homes for themselves. They were served, and far from inefficiently, by the American ocean sailing packets, which left Liverpool weekly for New York; and unless the steam line were able to provide for the exchange of their letters at rates as low as they were paying, they would no more patronize the new line than they had the ten-gun sailing brigs, by which the British packet service was then carried on.