The History of the Post Office in British North America

by William Smith

The communications respecting the post office passed him by entirely, unless some trouble arose which made an appeal necessary. In the present case, if he had been made acquainted with the circumstances in time, he would have laid them before the legislature, and left them to decide whether any of the services were to be dropped, or the deficit made up. As a result, Howe was admonished that his irregular practice must cease, and that when recourse to the legislature was necessary, he should approach them through the lieutenant governor alone.

In 1842, the situation became more acute. The assembly had before them the accounts of 1841, in which figured the additional expenses due to the ambitious transatlantic steamship scheme. At the best, the revenues from the inland services were no more than sufficient to meet its expenses, and the increase in the cost of the conveyance between Halifax and Pictou from £285 a year to £1937 (£1550 sterling), and the additional expense in the Halifax post office from £625 a year to £1694 due to a large augmentation in the staff, involved the legislature in a situation, to which they were disinclined to submit.

The trouble was precipitated by a letter from Howe to the lieutenant governor, informing him that, as the sum of £1143 had been advanced by him from the packet postage, which belonged to the British treasury, and as the legislature had appropriated only £550 to meet this advance, there was still the sum of £593 due to His Majesty.

The assembly to whom Howe's communication was referred, took the opportunity of reviewing the whole situation. It was beyond doubt that, in 1839, the internal postal service was self-supporting. This condition was disturbed to the detriment of the financial position of the post office by burdening it with the total expense of the Pictou service, which was maintained principally for the benefit of New Brunswick and Canada, and of the Halifax post office, which since the establishment of the ocean steam service for all the colonies was in reality much more an imperial than a provincial institution.

As, in justice, the inland colonies were chargeable with the major part of the outlay for the Pictou service, and the maintenance of Halifax post office should properly be defrayed from the packet postage, the legislature declined to meet the demand made upon it by the post office.

The lieutenant governor was in full sympathy with the legislature, and after fortifying himself with the opinions of his law officers as to the legal aspects of the case, appealed to the governor general to induce the Canadian government to take on themselves the proper share of the charge.

The Canadian government for the reasons given could not see the propriety of their taking on themselves any part of the expense of conveying mails to their outport at Quebec, and the British government were powerless to bring pressure on the Canadians, since the treasury was in receipt annually of large remittances from Stayner as surplus post office revenues, which the British government, by their act of 1834, admitted to belong to the colonies, and which only awaited colonial legislation to be handed over to the several legislatures.

The treasury was willing also as a measure of grace to allow the colonial legislatures to retain the part of the packet postage collected in the colonies, if they would only adopt the scheme involved in the act of 1834. But it was not prepared to admit that any part of the packet was, as a matter of right, chargeable with the maintenance of the post office at Halifax or of the Pictou coach service, and as it was becoming plain that the scheme of making Halifax the distributing centre for the Canadas, was not proving the success they hoped for, they determined to inquire as to the feasibility of having a port in the United States utilized in the exchange between Canada and Great Britain.

To that end, an official of the British post office, W. J. Page, was sent to Nova Scotia to investigate this subject, and at the same time to make a thorough inquiry into the condition of the Nova Scotia post office, which had been animadverted upon rather severely by the royal commission, in its report of 1841.

By means of Page's reports and of the report of this commission, we are enabled to give a clear account of the Nova Scotia post office in the beginning of the forties. There were eighteen post offices in the province at this period, and fifty-one sub-offices. The mails were carried on the route from Halifax to Pictou and St. John three times a week in summer and twice a week in winter.