The History of the Post Office in British North America

by William Smith

Remembering the resentment with which half a century later the Americans greeted every scheme, which could be construed into imposing a tax without their consent, one wonders how the post office act of 1710 was regarded in the colonies.

The question is interesting enough to warrant some inquiry. The legislative records have been searched carefully, and also, so far as they were available, the newspapers of the period. With one exception about to be mentioned, the only reference to the post office act which has been discovered is in the New Hampshire records. There it is stated that the act was read before the council on the 13th of September, 1711, and afterwards proclaimed by beat of drum in the presence of the council and of some members of the house of representatives.

The case in which the act came into question occurred in Virginia. This colony had no post office in 1710, nor for a considerable period afterwards; and it was the attempt to put the post office in operation in 1717 which led to the protest and the countervailing action.

Virginia seems to have had no desire to be included in the American postal system. In 1699 Hamilton reported on the proposition of extending the system southward to Virginia.[40] The extension would cost £500; and Hamilton declared that the desire for communicating with the northern colonies was so slight that he did not believe there would be one hundred letters a year exchanged between Virginia and Maryland and the other colonies. Practically all the correspondence of the two colonies was with Great Britain and other countries in Europe.

In the autumn of 1717, steps were taken to establish a post office in the two colonies, and to connect them with the other colonies. Postmasters were appointed in each colony. Couriers carried the mails into several of the more populous counties; and a fortnightly service was established between Williamsburg and Philadelphia. This was quite satisfactory, until the people began to read the placards which they observed affixed to every post office wall, directing that all letters, not expressly excepted by the act of parliament, should be delivered to the local postmasters. Here was matter for thought.

A glance at the tariff showed that the charge made by the post office on a letter from England was one shilling for a single letter. The letters from England were the only letters the people of Virginia cared anything about, and they were accustomed to pay only a penny as postage for them.

There was some little trouble, and perhaps a slight risk attending the safe delivery of letters by the existing arrangement. Virginians were, however, used to it, and had no great fault to find. It might be that if they could have received their letters at the post office for the same charge as they paid for receiving them direct from the ship captains, they would have preferred going to the post office.

But the difference in convenience between the two places of receipt was not worth the difference between one penny and one shilling; and indeed it looked uncommonly as if the government were using this means to tax them elevenpence on every letter they received.

The people, on realizing the condition of things, made a great clamour.[41] Parliament, they declared, could levy no tax on them but with the consent of the assembly; and besides that, their letters were all exempted from the monopoly of the postmaster general because they nearly all, in some way or other, related to trade.

The Virginians were putting an unwarrantably broad interpretation on an exemption, which appears in all post office acts, in favour of letters relating to goods which the letters accompany on the vessel. It has always been the practice to allow shipmasters, carrying a consignment of goods, to deliver the invoice to the consignee with the goods, in order that the transaction might be completed with convenience.