[188] Can. Arch., Br. P.O. Transcripts, III.
[189] Ibid., II.
CHAPTER VIII
Postal conditions in Upper Canada—Serious abuses—Agitation for provincial control.
To those who have followed the course of events thus far, noting the uncompromising attitude of the general post office towards all propositions for the extension of the postal system in Canada, it will be obvious that a struggle for the means of communication impended, which the rapid growth of the country was fast precipitating.
The general post office claimed that it, and it alone, had power to establish a postal service in any part of the country, and it used its arrogated powers in the same manner as any commercial monopoly would be exercised. Post offices were opened in all the better settled parts of the country, where they could be operated profitably. They were refused in the newer districts, unless satisfactory guarantees were given that there would be no loss in working them.
A population was coming into the country rapidly, and was tending towards the inland parts of the province far from the line of post offices which skirted the shores of the St. Lawrence and lake Ontario, and the situation was becoming embarrassing, as well as humiliating to the sensitive pride of the people.
It was easy enough to open post offices on the route pursued by the mail courier from the eastern boundary of the province to Niagara. But it was frequently expensive to open new routes, and the provincial government of Upper Canada was disinclined to give guarantees against loss on particular routes, while it had evidence that considerable profits were being taken from the older routes, and sent to the general post office in London.