CHAPTER XVII
Canadian ocean mail service—Want of sympathy of British government therewith.
The progress of the Cunard line had a consequence which was neither anticipated nor welcomed by the British government. The plan of the government to concentrate its transatlantic communications on Halifax had been given a thorough trial and had proven a failure, and as the expressed wish of the Canadians to have their correspondence with the mother country exchanged at either Boston or New York coincided with the interests of the owners of the steamers, the principal port of call on this side of the Atlantic shifted through a series of arrangements from Halifax to New York.
In 1852, the contract between the British government and the Cunards provided for a direct service of weekly frequency between Liverpool and New York, with a subordinate service by slower steamers to Halifax and Boston. The subsidy had also undergone successive augmentations until, in 1852, it reached the immense sum of £173,340 a year.[296] But although the service was now to all appearances Anglo-American in character the British government assumed to regard it as Anglo-colonial, as imperial, because it provided the means for exchanging the mails between Great Britain and Canada.
In 1855, the British government set on foot one of those large colonial schemes which ought to have excited mistrust both as to its practicability and its expediency. It proposed to establish a low and uniform rate between Great Britain and all her dependencies excepting India, Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius and Van Diemen's Land. The postage was to be reduced from one shilling to sixpence per half ounce letter.[297]
Coupled with the reduction in rate was a proposal that arrangements should be made by which the maintenance of the services, which had hitherto fallen entirely upon the mother country, should be shared by the colonies having the benefit of them.
WILLIAM WHITE, C.M.G
(Deputy Postmaster General 1888-1897)