A curious fact appears in the post office list of 1819. At this date Toronto was still called York, and Hamilton was without a post office altogether. Nevertheless a post office called Toronto was on the list of 1819 as having been opened in 1817, with Charles Fothergill as postmaster, and another called Hamilton was opened in 1819 with James Bethune as postmaster. There was nothing to indicate where these post offices were situated until changes were made in the names, and Toronto was converted into Port Hope and Hamilton into Cobourg.
Fothergill, who had the post office established at Port Hope, appears more than once in the course of post office history. He was member of the house of assembly and king's printer, as well as postmaster. About this time the house began to express dissatisfaction with the service provided by the post office, and to demand information as to its affairs, which the deputy postmaster general was not prepared to furnish. Among the critics was Fothergill, who was speedily punished for his independence. He was dismissed from the office of king's printer by the governor.[174]
The conveyance of the mails between Canada and Great Britain occupied much attention during Sutherland's term. The packets, that is the vessels employed expressly for the conveyance of the mails, had at this date almost ceased to be employed for the transmission of any but official correspondence. The interests of the governors and other officials in British North America and Bermuda, and of the British minister at Washington and consuls in the United States, were the only interests considered in the arrangements for this service.
Speedy transmission was sacrificed without a thought, to provide against imagined dangers to safe transmission. When the packet service was established, the vessels made monthly trips during the summer from Falmouth, in England, to Halifax and thence to New York, returning by the same route. The mails for Bermuda were landed at Halifax, and taken to their destination in a war vessel.
During the winter, the vessels from Falmouth did not run to Halifax, but proceeded directly to New York. In 1806, at the instance of the admiralty, orders were given that, whenever possible during the winter, the packets should touch at Bermuda on their way to New York.[175] On the eve of the war of 1812, Prevost, the governor general, who was fearful for the safety of the mails, begged that this course might be adopted as the regular winter course, and that mails for Canada and other parts of British North America should be put off at Bermuda, and conveyed from there to Halifax.
To make the mails for Canada go as far south as Bermuda seems outrageous, but Prevost was willing to put up with any slowness in transmission rather than have his despatches touch United States soil.
This course was pursued until the war ended in 1815, and continued for many winters after that time.
But it was too bad to escape criticism from officials themselves. At the end of the summer of 1816, when the packets were about to be taken off the Halifax route, the rear-admiral on the North American station asked that the packets should continue to call at Halifax during the winter, and, by way of satisfying the post office of the feasibility of his suggestion, furnished a list of some seventy vessels which had entered Halifax during the previous winter, which was allowed to be the severest for many years, and found no more trouble in making this port than the port of New York.[176]
The suggestion aroused great opposition--an opposition which would be quite incomprehensible to-day. The agent of the packet service at Falmouth assembled all commanders who happened to be in port, and asked them their opinion. They were unanimous in the belief that the only safe course to Halifax would be to go first to Bermuda, thence to New York, and finally to Halifax.[177] The prevalence of north-westerly winds during the winter would make a direct sailing from Falmouth to Halifax impracticable.
The commanders did not consider it advisable, however, to adopt this course, as it would lengthen the trip by from two to three weeks, and as the voyages would be much rougher, there would be few passengers. The wear and tear on the packets would be greater, and besides the men would require great coats and spirits. During the late war each packet took sixty gallons of rum each way.
Lord Dalhousie became governor general in 1819 and he made bitter complaint of the length of time taken in the delivery of his winter despatches.[178] The despatches leaving England in November 1821 and 1822, did not reach him until the following February, and his February despatches arrived in Quebec in May. He asked that the mails containing his correspondence should not be put off the packet at Bermuda, but that they be carried to New York, where he would have his messenger on hand to receive them.
It is difficult to see why this should not have been done. Ever since the establishment of peace in 1783, there had been a British packet agent at New York, whose sole duty it was to act as intermediary for the despatch by the outgoing British packet boat, of all correspondence reaching him from the governors or other officials in British North America, or from the ambassadors or consuls in the United States.[179]
Dalhousie's messenger took his outgoing despatches to the packet agent, and the governor could not understand the objections to allowing the same messenger to carry the incoming despatches back with him. The packet agent at New York strongly supported the governor's request, and pointed out how his own office might be made of much greater utility, if he were employed freely, not only for the transmission of official correspondence, but for the interchange of general correspondence between Canada and Great Britain. He declared that the United States government had shown the utmost courtesy to the governor's messengers.
They had not been molested in any way, and for some time past, the earlier practice of requiring the couriers to be provided with passports had been allowed to drop.[180]
The agent proposed that during the winter the English exchange office should make up separate bags for Upper and Lower Canada, which on arrival at New York would be delivered to his office. He would then see that the bags were forwarded by special messenger without delay.
His plan, however, was open to strong objection, and the British post office, which was averse to making any change in the direction proposed, was quick to seize upon it. While acknowledging the good will of the United States government regarding the conveyance of official despatches through their territory by British messengers, the secretary stated that the conveyance of ordinary mails by the same means was a very different matter, which would give rise to a justifiable claim on the part of the United States department, and if the charges which would have to be paid to the United States department were added to the other postage rates, the total postage to be collected from the recipients of the letters would be very large.
But the argument of the secretary was based on the supposition that the mails would be carried as the despatches were, by Canadian messengers from New York, and that the letters they carried would be subject to a double charge, viz:--the expenses of the messenger, and the sum which the United States might exact for the mere transit over its territory.
If the British mails arriving at New York by the packet were handed over to the United States post office for transmission, as had been the case before the war of 1812, there would have been no such excessive charge.
This was what was desired on all sides in Canada. The service would have been much faster, and for Montreal and all places in Upper Canada the postage would have been lower. Since the spring of 1817, steamboats were employed to carry the mails between New York and Albany twice a week, and with other improvements on the route, the time between New York and Montreal was shortened to three days in summer and five in winter.
From New York to York took from nine to eleven days by way of Montreal, and a day less if the mails were carried from New York along the Mohawk valley route to Queenston on the Niagara river, and thence to York.
Compare this with the time occupied between Halifax and Quebec. A month was the average, and to that had to be added two days to Montreal and eight days to York. No advantage enjoyed by Halifax over New York on the sea trip could compensate for the disparity from which the land route between Halifax and Montreal suffered in comparison with the route from New York to Montreal, and as Montreal was the gateway to Upper Canada, the whole of the new province suffered in equal measure with that city.
The gain in time by the New York route was submitted to the general post office, but the proposition to land the mails at that port was opposed by the secretary. He found that there would be eightpence less postage on each letter to Quebec, if it were sent through the United States instead of through the Maritime provinces, and, besides, he was doubtful as to the propriety of sanctioning any scheme which would permit private and mercantile letters to reach Quebec before the government despatches, which in any case must come by way of Halifax.
But though the comings and the goings of the packets were a matter of much concern to Lord Dalhousie and to others, whose correspondence had to be carried by this means, they were of little moment to the general public, who had found a very satisfactory means for the conveyance of their correspondence.
In 1826, the treasury set on foot inquiries as to the arrangements for the conveyance of correspondence across the Atlantic, and the information they obtained must have surprised them.[181] There were three modes of sending letters to Canada from Great Britain. The first was by the official sailing packets. The usefulness of the packets, however, was limited to the conveyance of official despatches.
The high charges and the slowness of the service abundantly account for the failure of the public to employ this means of transmission. The postage on a single letter, that is a single sheet of paper weighing less than an ounce, was two shillings and twopence sterling from London to Halifax by way of Falmouth. To this must be added the postage from Halifax to points in Canada, which was one shilling and eightpence to Quebec; one shilling and tenpence to Montreal; two shillings and twopence to Kingston; two shillings and sixpence to York; and three shillings to Amherstburg.
Thus, employing the more familiar decimal currency, the postage on a single sheet, weighing less than one ounce, posted in London and sent by packet to Halifax and thence to its destination in Canada was, to Quebec ninety-two cents; to Montreal ninety-six cents; to Kingston one dollar and four cents; to York one dollar and twelve cents; and to Amherstburg one dollar and twenty-four cents. Remembering Dalhousie's complaint that it took upwards of seventy days for one of these precious letters to reach him, the unpopularity of the packet service can be appreciated.
The second agency for conveying letters from England to Canada, was by private ship, but through the medium of the post office. A person desiring to send a letter from London to a post office in Canada would write on the cover a direction that the letter was to be sent by a ship which he would name, and post it in the ordinary way.
The post office would accept the direction, and would charge just one half the packet postage for the conveyance to Halifax or Quebec, that is, instead of two shillings and twopence for the sea conveyance, the letter would only be charged one shilling and one penny. But the high charges between the port of arrival in British North America and the offices in inland Canada prevented the extensive use of this means of conveyance.
The third mode of conveyance was irregular, but it was universally employed. There were lines of sailing vessels, called American packets, running between Liverpool and New York, which were fast sailers, and which would carry letters from England to the United States for twopence a letter, without regard to its weight or the number of enclosures it contained.
The agents of these lines kept bags in their offices in London and Liverpool, and when the vessels were due to sail, the bags were sealed and placed on board. The conveyance of the letter bags from London to Liverpool by the messengers of the sailing lines was illegal, as the postmaster general had the exclusive right to convey letters within the United Kingdom. There could have been no possibility of carrying on the traffic in a clandestine manner, as it was wholesale in character, and comprised the correspondence of the most eminent merchants in London. On inquiry it was learned that one merchant alone sent one thousand letters by this means, and not one by the official packets, and the practice was universal.[182]
On the arrival of the American packets at New York, the letters for Canada were deposited in the New York post office, and forwarded to the Canadian border office in the United States mails, and thence to their destination. The postage by this course was very much less than by either of the other routes.
It was made up of three factors: the ocean postage of four cents, the United States postage of nineteen or twenty-five cents--according to the point at which the Canadian border was reached--and the inland Canadian postage. The charge on a single letter to Quebec was forty-seven cents instead of ninety-two cents, which would be due if sent by the packet route. To Montreal, Kingston, York and Amherstburg, the postage on a letter from London or Liverpool was thirty-one cents, forty-seven cents, forty-one cents and sixty-one cents, as against ninety-six cents, one dollar and four cents, one dollar and twelve cents and one dollar and twenty-four cents respectively.
Letters to York coming from New York had the advantage of a daily conveyance to Lewiston, where the transfer to the Canadian border office at Queenstown was made, and of the lower charges which the United States post office imposed for long distances. These figures, the lowest then attainable, inevitably suggest comparisons.
It is only a few years since good citizens were rejoicing that the postage rate between the mother country and Canada was brought down from five cents to two cents a letter. Here was a link of empire of daily utility. Communication could be kept up between the British immigrant and his friends at home without too heavy a draft on slender purses. His heart would remain British, and as he prospered he would induce others of his friends and neighbours to come over and settle.
A glance backward will show how little these agencies of empire were able to effect in our grandfather's time. The lowest possible postage charge from London to York fifty years ago was forty-one cents, and that would carry no more than one sheet of paper weighing less than an ounce.
If within the folds of this sheet were found another piece of paper no larger than a postage stamp, the charge of conveyance from New York to York was doubled, and with the ocean postage of four cents, the poor immigrant would have to pay seventy-eight cents for his letter.
If the letter weighed an ounce, that is, if it were such a letter as would pass anywhere within the British Empire for four cents, the charge for it coming from London to York would be one dollar and fifty-two cents. Finally, if this ounce letter were sent by the All-Red route, that is by the British packet to Halifax and thence over British soil to York, the postage charge would be four dollars and forty-eight cents.
Imperial sentiment must have rivalled wit in economy of expression in those days.
While the British post office was unwilling to encourage the use of the United States mails for the conveyance of letters between Canada and Great Britain, it was anxious to put the British packet service on a better footing. But the service had been going from bad to worse, and it had reached a stage where it satisfied nobody.
Of the three points to which mails were carried--Halifax, New York and Bermuda--the last named always held the position of advantage during the winter. Until the winter of 1826 the packet called first at Bermuda, leaving Canadian mails there, and continuing on to New York. At the beginning of the winter of 1826 a change was made.[183] The packet sailed to Bermuda, put off the United States mails there, and sailed northward to Halifax, omitting New York. The United States mails were conveyed by mail boat from Bermuda to Annapolis, Maryland.
This scheme remedied none of the defects of its predecessor, and brought with it the additional disadvantage that it cut off all direct connection between the British minister at Washington, and the governors of the British colonies.
The secretary of the post office in explaining the arrangements to the postmaster general washed his hands of all responsibility for them. He declared that the plan originated with the admiralty, and was sanctioned by the foreign and colonial secretaries as a practical measure. The postmaster general on reviewing the correspondence was not surprised at the general dissatisfaction, and was glad that the arrangements could not be laid at the door of the post office.
The ocean mail service was beyond the control of the deputy postmaster general of Canada. The postal relations with the United States were not, and he exerted himself to improve these. A hardship under which Canadian merchants doing business with the United States laboured was that they had to pay the postage on all their letters as far as the United States border.
It will be difficult to-day to see wherein the grievance of the early Canadian merchants lay. But at that time the postage was a considerable item in every transaction, and the merchant could not afford to disregard it. When he sold a bill of goods to a customer in the United States, he was obliged to throw on the customer the burden of the postage on the correspondence relating to the goods, and the only sure way of doing this was to post the letters unpaid, and leave the customer to pay the postage on the delivery of the letters. If he had to pay from eight to twenty cents which were required to take each single letter as far as the border, he was apt to lose this sum.
To protect themselves the Canadian merchants used to employ private messengers to carry their letters as far as the nearest post office in the United States, and post them there. From this United States office the letters would go to their destination without pre-payment.
Sutherland informed the postmaster general that some of the leading mercantile houses in Canada sent hundreds of letters into the United States by private hand.[184]
The United States merchant selling goods in Canada stood in a better position as regards his correspondence. He was able to post his letters for Canada unpaid, and the letter came into Canada and went to its destination, where the person addressed paid the postage on delivery of the letter. This was made possible by an arrangement between the deputy postmaster general of Canada, and the post office department at Washington, by which the former undertook to collect and pay over to the latter the share of the postage which was due to the United States department, receiving twenty per cent. for his trouble.
The arrangement was a purely private one, for which Sutherland did not feel called upon to account to the general post office. What he desired was that there should be some postmaster in the United States who would act as agent for the collection of Canadian postage on letters entering the United States from Canada, and he found the postmaster of Swanton, Vermont, quite willing to act in this capacity.
As Swanton was the United States post office through which all correspondence passed from Lower Canada into the United States, the postmaster was well situated for this duty. The only difficulty was about the commission of twenty per cent., which would have to be paid to the postmaster as compensation. It was necessary to obtain the consent of the British post office to this arrangement, as the deputy postmaster general had no power to make abatements in the postage due to Canada, without the authority of the postmaster general.
But this consent the postmaster general was not disposed to give.[185]
Besides the objection that the Canadian post office would receive only eighty per cent. of the postage due on letters going to the United States, the secretary suggested to the postmaster general that it would seem inadvisable, politically, to encourage unlimited correspondence between all sorts of persons in the two countries, without possibility of restriction or of learning (should it be necessary) with whom any particular person was in correspondence.
Indeed, the secretary had his doubts as to the legality of the arrangement by which Sutherland acted as agent for the collection of the United States postage on letters coming from that country into Canada.
The rates of postage, said he, are distinctly specified in various acts of parliament, and the Canadian post office had no power to demand more than the sum required by the statutes. If it were thought advisable to have Canadian postmasters collect United States postage, a new legislative provision would have to be made, which would lead to similar applications from other countries, and the result would be confusion and loss of revenue.