The frequency of the trips made by the mail couriers over the several stretches of this long route varied considerably. Between Halifax and Quebec, a courier travelled each way weekly. The section between Quebec and Montreal, the most populous in the country, was covered by couriers, who passed five times each way weekly between the two cities.
From Montreal westward along the shores of the St. Lawrence and lake Ontario to Niagara and Amherstburg, there were semi-weekly trips.
Running out from this trunk line there were six cross routes, four in Lower Canada, and two in Upper Canada. Two of these left the trunk line at Three Rivers--one running to Sorel, by way of Nicolet, with semi-weekly mails; and the other to Sherbrooke, Stanstead and other places in the eastern townships. There was a weekly service over this route.
Mails were carried up the Ottawa river from Montreal as far as Hull, and southward to St. Johns; in both cases twice weekly. In Upper Canada, the only cross routes were one from Cornwall to Hawkesbury, with weekly mails, and another from Brockville to Perth, with mails twice a week.
From Perth there was a weekly courier to Richmond.
The two principal points of connection with the United States were at St. Johns, south of Montreal, and Queenston on the Niagara river. As early as 1828, the United States post office had a daily service by steamer on lake Champlain, which ran as far northward as St. Johns. In 1831, Stayner made a notable improvement in the mail service from Montreal to Niagara, increasing the frequency of the trips to five each week, and reducing the time of conveyance between the two points to six days.
The appointment of Stayner in no way diminished the energy with which the houses of assembly pursued their campaign against the administration of the post office. In March 1828, the assembly in Upper Canada named a committee consisting of Fothergill, Ingersoll, Matthews and Beardsley, to inquire into the state of the post office. Their report, which was made in 1829, did not disclose any new facts. Indeed, it would not seem that the assemblies, in the series of inquiries, which were ordered from year to year, thought so much of obtaining new light on the question as of keeping the public alive to the grievances, which they were made to appear to suffer.
The committee of 1829, after affirming the illegality of the existing system and declaring that the surplus revenue which was sent annually to Great Britain, was the result of starving the service, recommended the establishment of a provincial post office, subject to the legislatures.
Post routes should be opened to every court house, and the charges on letters and newspapers conveyed by steamboats should not exceed twopence and one farthing each respectively.
The lieutenant governor, Sir John Colborne, though friendly to Stayner, and appreciative of his efforts to meet the demands of the public in Upper Canada, was not altogether satisfied with the system. He maintained that it was impossible for Stayner from his headquarters in Quebec to follow the rapid changes in the conditions of settlement in Upper Canada, and was of opinion that the remedy for the existing shortcomings of the post office in that province was to appoint an official of a rank equal, or nearly so, to that held by Stayner, and station him in Toronto.
Colborne, in communicating the view to the colonial office,[213] also requested that arrangements should be made for a regular interchange of correspondence between Upper Canada and Great Britain, by way of New York.
Freeling, the secretary of the post office, was quite willing to meet the views of the lieutenant governor, but was inclined to the view that the people on both sides of the Atlantic had already settled the question their own way. He explained that there was a plan in full operation by which the correspondence between Liverpool and Upper Canada was conveyed across the ocean independently of the post office at twopence a letter, and that there was little likelihood that the public would seek the aid of the post office to have this conveyance done for them, and thereby become subject to charges four times as great.
The people of Liverpool, who had the largest correspondence with the United States, Freeling reminded Colborne, scarcely sent one letter per week by post, though thousands were sent outside the post office, by the same vessels as carried the mails for the post office. As for the appointment of a resident deputy in Upper Canada, Freeling thought there would be no objection to such an arrangement.
In this opinion Stayner by no means concurred. He could see no good reason for such an appointment. The postmaster general was more impressed with the representations on behalf of the province than Freeling thought desirable. Freeling reminded the postmaster general that his powers might not be equal to his desires. He observed that in the lieutenant governor's letter, a question was involved as to whether, and if so, to what extent, the revenues of the post office could be devoted to the general improvement of communications for the public advantage, and he conceived that this was a point of view from which the postmaster general was not empowered to regard the subject.
But the forces were gathering for an attack on the post office, which promised to be much more formidable than any which had preceded it.
Until that time, the assailants of the system had been confined to what the official clique regarded as the radicals and republicans and grievance-mongers. In the houses of assembly the grievances of which they complained became the motive of highly effective speeches and resolutions, but the injuries they alleged really hurt nobody.
The rates of postage on letters were, according to present day standards, exorbitant. But they were no higher than those charged in England; and after all the post office was but little used by the masses of the people. It is doubtful if the post office were employed in 1830 any more freely than the telegraph is to-day. In their contention that it was a violation of constitutional guarantees to send the surplus post office revenue to England, the assemblies were undoubtedly correct, but loyal people bear many things of that kind easily.
At this time, however, the question was taken up by a body to whom the postage rates were a personal grievance, and who at the same time possessed the means of successful agitation. In the beginning of 1829, a number of newspaper publishers in Lower Canada approached the governor general, Sir James Kempt, with a request that they might be relieved of the payment of postage on the newspapers which they sent to subscribers.[214] They did not ask that the postage be remitted altogether. All they desired was that the postage should be collected from the subscribers and not from themselves. They also suggested that the charge might be fixed at one penny per copy.
Stayner declared that he had no power to enter into such an arrangement.
The publishers thereupon changed their request, and asked that they might be put on the same footing as the newspaper publishers in England stood, and be thus entirely exempt from postage on their newspapers.
British publishers had enjoyed this concession since 1825, but as they still had to pay a heavy excise duty on the paper they used, they could not be regarded as free from public charges. In Canada there was no stamp duty on paper. This difference between their situation and that of their brethren in England was pointed out to the publishers, but the explanation failed to satisfy.
One of the publishers, who had some inkling of the fact that the newspaper postage did not go into the public revenue, but formed part of the emoluments of the deputy postmaster general, observed that with as much consistency a toll keeper might insist on farmers paying high charges to him, because they paid no tithes.
With the publishers awake to the fact that they had something to complain of, they made the most of their grievance. They were experts in this line of exploitation. They found that the newspaper charges, which they were convinced had no legal sanction, had been steadily advancing for forty years past. In 1790, a shilling a year was all that was charged as postage for each copy of a weekly newspaper. This rate was increased by degrees to one shilling and threepence, one shilling and eightpence, two shillings, two shillings and sixpence, until, in 1830, it had risen to four shillings a year on weekly papers, and to five shillings for papers published twice a week. The discontent of the publishers was not lessened by the knowledge that in the Maritime provinces, the yearly rate for weekly papers was two shillings and sixpence for each copy.
The agitation against the newspaper charges was set in motion by Robert Armour, proprietor of the _Montreal Gazette_. It had come to his knowledge that the sums collected from the publishers did not appear in the accounts of the postmasters with the department, and he suspected that in some way they were retained by Stayner, though on this point he had no certain information.
After Armour learned that the rates had been subjected to a continuous process of enhancement, he made diligent search for any warrant that might exist for the successive advances or indeed for the original charge. Finding none, he turned to the authorities for information. It was he who led the deputation to the governor general for relief in some form. When this step failed, Armour demanded of the deputy postmaster general his authority for the newspaper charges.
Getting no answer from that quarter, Armour endeavoured to bring matters to an issue by refusing to pay the postage on the copies of his paper which he posted in Montreal. The postmaster declined to accept the papers without the postage, and Armour appealed to the postmaster general in London. In due time the reply from the department was received, and while it offered no immediate relief, it put Armour in possession of some exclusive information, which, as a newspaper man, he must have considered valuable.
Freeling, the secretary, informed Armour that the postmaster of Montreal had failed in his duty, in refusing to transmit the newspapers simply because the postage was not paid. The postmaster should have sent the newspapers forward, and since the postage demanded by Stayner was not paid, it fell upon the postmasters of the offices to which the papers were directed to collect the postage, at the same rates as were charged on letters.
As each paper was under this ruling chargeable with the rate which was due on four letters, it may well be imagined that no publisher would offer to pay the post office for the distribution of his papers by that means. On these conditions, the postage on each copy sent from Montreal to any of the post offices on the island of Montreal, to St. Johns or to the nearer settlements in Upper Canada would be thirty-two cents. Each copy sent to Three Rivers or to any points between sixty and one hundred miles from Montreal would cost the subscribers forty-eight cents.
It is needless to pursue the charges into districts where the copies were sent over one hundred miles. Freeling went on to explain that, as the post office act had no provision for the conveyance of newspapers, the postmaster general, in order to accommodate the publishers permitted the deputy postmaster general to make private arrangements with them for the transmission of their newspapers. By ancient and authorized custom, the deputy postmaster general was allowed to treat the receipts from this source as his own perquisite. This information with the comments thereon greatly enlivened many issues of the _Gazette_.
Freeling was denounced as a sinecurist, who permitted impositions in the colonies which he dared not make at home. Armour announced that he would carry the matter into the legislature, and, if necessary, into the courts. He had no desire to escape the payment of postage. All he demanded was the establishment of an equitable rate, placed on a legal basis. His idea was that the postmasters who handled the newspapers should be paid from five to ten per cent. of their cost. The rates charged by Stayner amounted to from twenty to twenty-five per cent. of the subscription price. Armour would resist Stayner's claim to be a sleeping partner in his business, who, contributing neither capital nor talent, dictated what his share of the revenue should be.
Armour could write well, and his onslaught caused Stayner much uneasiness. In a letter to the postmaster general[215] he attributed it to some neglect or indignity, which Armour fancied he suffered at the hands of a former deputy postmaster general, while, he stated, other newspapers were recognizing with gratitude Stayner's efforts to satisfy the reasonable demands of the public.
Every side of Stayner's work was vigorously attacked in the _Gazette_.
Complaints were made of a lack of necessary mail routes, and of an insufficiency of service on existing routes. It was charged also that Stayner's attention was confined to the older and more thickly settled districts, which yielded the largest revenues. But, according to Stayner, Armour's silence could have been purchased by a share of the official printing which Stayner declined to give him. Whatever grounds Stayner had for making the insinuation, there can be no question as to the energy with which Armour bent himself to the task of exposing the methods of the post office. When his papers were held in the Montreal post office on account of his refusal to prepay the postage, he entered actions for large amounts against Stayner.
These failed, as the courts declined to deal with the cases. He then addressed himself to the legislature. In the beginning of 1831, Armour and a number of other publishers presented a petition to the house of assembly of Lower Canada, setting forth the high rates they had to pay as postage for the transmission of their newspapers, and the impropriety of Stayner's practice in appropriating the proceeds; and asking that they might be put on an equal footing with the publishers in Great Britain.
The petition was handed over to a committee of the house, who proceeded to investigate the facts. In this they were only moderately successful, as the only person who was in a position to give them the information they desired, declined to answer the interrogatories put to him.[216]
Stayner, in reply to inquiries as to the financial condition of the post office and the disposition of the surplus revenues, pleaded that he was employed by a branch of the imperial government, which in none of its instructions had recognized the right of the assembly to institute the inquiries being made. To answer the questions put to him by the committee might lead to disclosures, which would involve him with his superior officers until he had received specific instructions from them on the point.
But though little was learned from Stayner, the committee had obtained some useful information from inquiries made in the British house of commons by Joseph Hume. It appeared that the large sum of 36,000 had been received by the British treasury as surplus revenue for the years 1825 and 1826.
Stayner endeavoured to lessen the importance of this fact by declaring that more than half the amount was postage paid by the army, which was not properly chargeable with postage at all. The committee declined to accept this view; and while perfectly friendly to Stayner, and admitting that he had effected some considerable improvements, they were persuaded that the service was far from being what the people had a right to expect.
Looking outwards from Quebec, the committee observed that there was no postal service whatever in the counties of Montmorency and Saguenay, which embraced the earliest settlements in the country. On the south shore of the St. Lawrence, and along the Etchemin and Chaudiere rivers, there was a wide stretch of well-settled country entirely lacking the means of communication with the capital, though but a short distance from it.
From Quebec eastward to the New Brunswick boundary there were over 100,000 people, and the only postal accommodation for this great extent of territory was afforded by seven post offices lying along the line of the post route between Quebec and Halifax. The peninsula of Gaspe, with a line of fishing settlements all along the coast, had but two mails each year.
The committee regretted particularly the situation as regards the conveyance of newspapers. The post office was under no legal obligation to carry them except as letters, and yet there was no other means available for their circulation. If the law had not conferred on the post office a monopoly of carrying letters, the publishers would have a resource. They might establish a transportation system, and meet their expenses by carrying letters as well as newspapers.
The secrecy with which the affairs of the post office were surrounded was much deprecated by the committee, as giving ground for speculation and suspicion that could not fail to do harm to the institution. If, under the present system of imperial control, an adequate service were rendered, there would have been no just grounds for complaint.
But if the interests of the province were not regarded, the people were entitled to object to their being limited to a means of conveyance which did not meet their requirements, and to assume that the revenue arising from the service was not properly applied. The committee in conclusion expressed their confidence in the good will of both the postmaster general and his deputy in Canada, and their belief that their complaint had only to be laid before the governor general to secure favourable consideration.
Before concluding to withhold from the house of assembly, the information it sought, Stayner with characteristic prudence had enlisted the support of the governor general, who coincided with him in his view as to the impropriety of his submitting to the questioning of the house regarding the affairs of a branch of the imperial service. When he laid the course he had pursued before the postmaster general, Stayner also gained his approval for the zeal and sagacity he had shown.
But Armour persisted in his attacks in the _Gazette_, and in the two sessions which followed managed to alienate from Stayner a large measure of the good will of the house of assembly. Stayner's determination to withhold information from the assembly was a source of irritation. The facts which had come to their knowledge through questions in the house of commons at Westminster, the ungracious admissions which the possession of these facts enabled the house to extort from Stayner, and his specious and unconvincing defence of his perquisites, all combined to change the house from an attitude of friendliness to one of criticism and even hostility.
The house no longer rested in the belief that, to obtain satisfaction, all that was necessary was to lay their grievances before the department. In 1832, it denounced the methods of the department, and presented an address to the governor general praying that the home government might place the post office under the control of the legislature.[217]
In the session of 1833, the pertinacious Armour again appeared before the assembly. He had no new facts to present, but managed to sustain the interest of the house in the facts already before it.
The assembly on this occasion set forth its views at greater length. In an address to the king,[218] it represented that the post office should not be a means of raising a revenue greater than was needed to enable it to establish offices wherever they might be required; that if the rates were higher than was necessary for that purpose they should be lowered; and that any surplus revenue should be at the disposition of the legislature for the improvement of communications by post throughout the country; also, that newspapers should pass through the post office in Lower Canada, free of postage.
In the assembly in Upper Canada the post office was also vigorously assailed. There was general agreement on the proposition that the existing arrangements were not satisfactory, but on the point of remedy opinions differed sharply. The reformers, of whom Dr. Duncombe was the spokesman, adopting the argument of the Baldwin committee of 1821, insisted that the post office had no legal basis in Upper Canada.
Duncombe and his associates held that it was a violation of the constitution to send any surplus revenue to Great Britain, and that it was the obvious duty of the legislature to pass an act, taking to itself the control of the provincial post office. They believed that the revenues from the service would amply suffice to cover all its expenses, but if it should turn out that such was not the case, they were prepared to meet the deficiency from the general revenues of the province.
The government party, on the other hand, always ready to fight for things as they were, did not accept the argument of the Baldwin committee. They held that the post office was an institution necessary to commerce, and, as such, it was not placed by the acts of 1778 and 1791 under the jurisdiction of the provincial legislature. They did not believe that the provincial post office furnished a revenue sufficient to cover the expenses, but if it should be shown that they were wrong, and that the post office yielded a surplus, they were convinced that the imperial government had no desire to retain the surplus for its own purposes.
Colborne, the lieutenant governor, was in general agreement with the government party. But he believed that, having regard to the great distances between Quebec, and the rapidly rising settlements in the remoter parts of Upper Canada, an administrator, having his headquarters at Quebec could never understand the necessities of the new districts, and that it was indispensable that there should be stationed at Toronto an officer with powers nearly, if not quite, equal to those of the deputy postmaster general at Quebec.
In the sessions of 1832 and 1833, the subject was warmly debated.[219]
The views of the reformers were presented by Duncombe and Bidwell. They were opposed by the attorney general (Henry John Boulton), the solicitor general (Christopher Hagerman), and Burwell, who was postmaster at Port Burwell.