CHAPTER XI
Continuance of agitation in the Canadas for control of the post office--Much information obtained by committees of legislatures--Difficulty in giving effect to reforms.
The proposals of the British post office for removing the objections to the existing arrangements without endangering the efficiency of the colonial postal system had a very different reception in the assemblies of Upper and Lower Canada from that which they met with in the Maritime provinces.
Owing to a general indisposition on the part of the legislatures of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to push their contentions to extremes, and doubtless also, to the fortunate relationship between the deputy postmaster general of the Maritime provinces and Joseph Howe, the leader of the reform party in Nova Scotia, the post office had been subject to no authoritative criticism in those provinces up to the time when the plans of the British post office were laid before the legislatures.
In the Canadas the situation was exactly the reverse, as regards both the state of public feeling and the claims of the deputy postmaster general upon the forbearance of the assemblies.
The discussion of political grievances was arousing in the popular party a bitterness which was fast carrying the agitation for remedies beyond constitutional bounds; and as for Stayner, he had quite alienated from himself the good will of the assemblies in Upper and Lower Canada, by his open identification of himself with the government party. When, therefore, the British proposals were laid before the assembly of Upper Canada by the lieutenant governor in 1835, they were rejected with the contemptuous observation that the provisions of the proposed bill were so absurd and inapplicable that no benefit could be expected from any attempt to amend them.[244]
The legislatures were not aware of the circumstances which had led to the British proposals. The fact that the views for which they had contended had been upheld by authorities so eminent as the law officers of the crown was withheld from them. The changed attitude of the postmaster general was therefore regarded by the assemblies as a proof of the success of their agitation, and they girded themselves up for renewed efforts.
As a preliminary to fresh attacks the assemblies in both provinces demanded from Stayner a mass of information, the extent of which filled him with dismay. But no further refusals on his part were possible. The colonial office was scarcely more pleased with Stayner and his methods than the provincial assemblies were, and the postmaster general was requested to see there were no more concealments.
The work which fell upon Stayner in the preparation of the returns called for was enormous. As printed by the legislature of Lower Canada, the documents produced filled two hundred and sixty-eight quarto pages.
Stayner appears to have withheld nothing. He became as effusive as he had formerly been reticent. He published letters written by himself to his official superiors, which must have proved embarrassing to them.
In the correspondence Stayner disclosed was a letter from the postmaster of Montreal, pleading for a more suitable room for his post office.[245]
From this letter it appears that in 1835, the post office in Montreal was in the upper storey of a building standing between the _Gazette_ printing establishment and a boarding house, and underneath it was a tailoring and dry goods shop. To get to the post office the public had to grope up an unlighted flight of stairs at the risk of their limbs, and when they reached the top they had to make their way across a small lobby half-filled with firewood.
As an inducement to the department to provide more suitable quarters, the postmaster stated that the merchants were so sensible of the inconvenience and danger from fire, that the postmaster thought they would help with the erection of a proper building, if applied to.
Stayner also produced the copy of a letter he had written a short time before, to the secretary of the general post office protesting his inability to meet the wants of the provinces with the means which the postmaster general had placed at his disposal. The letter deals chiefly with the conditions in Upper Canada, and as a description of the situation in that province it could not be bettered. The occasion of the letter was a complaint made by a gentleman in England that it had taken from the 12th of June until the 12th of October for a letter, addressed by him to his son in Barrie, to reach its destination.
Stayner in reporting on the subject, admitted that this was quite likely the case, but insisted that no blame was imputable to him. The nearest post office to Barrie was from thirty to forty miles distant, and it was probable that the letter had lain a couple of months at that office before being called for.
The case of the Barrie settlers was typical of that of thousands of well-educated people inhabiting the back parts of Upper Canada, where they had formed thriving towns and villages from twenty to fifty miles from the existing posts. These people with whom postal accommodation was almost a necessity of life were entirely without the means of corresponding with their distant friends, unless they sent and received their letters by private agency.
Stayner declared that he was well within bounds in saying that at that moment there were between two hundred and three hundred distinct societies of people spread over the country in Upper Canada alone, who, like the settlers in Barrie, were suffering from want of that accommodation which he would fain give them, if he had the power to do it. The case was to be the more lamented from the fact that the reasonable wants of these people could be supplied without burdening the post office revenue.
So active was the spirit of enterprise amongst the class of persons crowding into the new settlements throughout the whole extent of Upper Canada, as well as in many parts of the lower province, and so great was their disposition for letter writing, that Stayner was sure in a short time the increased revenue would amply repay the outlay required. But with the assistance allowed him, it was impossible to meet those demands.
It was indispensable that he should have at least two travelling officers, whose duty it should be to examine into the merits of applications, to settle questions of site, and arrange for mail carriers. As for mail carriers, Stayner believed that the surveyors would save their salaries by that item alone, as in the absence of officials who would make arrangements on the spot, the post office was being constantly exposed to imposition by carriers, against which it was impossible to provide.
During the first five years he had been in office, Stayner had increased the number of offices under his control from ninety to two hundred and seventy, but beyond that it was impossible for him, with his present assistance, to go. The parts of the country where new offices were called for were so remote, and the means of information so unsatisfactory that it would be improper for him to open offices and make contracts for serving them, without the advice of persons acting under his orders, upon whose judgment he could rely.
At that moment, Stayner further told the committee, the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada required not less than five hundred offices, that is, practically double the number then in operation, and in ten years, at least one thousand offices would be necessary to provide the requisite accommodation. With proper assistance he could establish and put into successful operation all that were wanted at the rate of one hundred a year. Less than that scale of advancement would fail to satisfy the public.
The complaints of the people had become so loud and threatening that, unless they were speedily met, Stayner was apprehensive they would be engrafted upon the catalogue of provincial grievances. Before he left England, Stayner had the postmaster general's promise that two surveyors would be at once appointed. He had waited as long as he felt that he dared, but the situation had become so alarming, that he had taken it upon himself to appoint two surveyors who would act under his directions, until regular appointments could be made.
After Stayner laid before the houses of assembly in the two provinces the various returns they had called for, committees were struck in each house to consider the information contained in the statements. The committee in Lower Canada took the evidence of Stayner and of William Lyon Mackenzie who happened to be in Quebec at the time, conferring with the reform leaders in Lower Canada.
Mackenzie's statement was a general arraignment of the administration of the post office. He declared that, as then constituted, the post office in the opinion of the assembly of Upper Canada, was an illegal institution, monopolizing the conveyance of epistolary correspondence which it taxes heavily, and appropriating the proceeds in England, without the knowledge and consent of the assembly.
It arbitrarily and often capriciously, the reformer from Upper Canada complained, fixed the sites of post offices, and dismissed and appointed the incumbents. It resolved that one section of the country, though thickly settled, should have no post offices, while another part which was almost destitute of inhabitants had regular mails. Newspapers were taxed at such a rate as the post office thought fit, and the proceeds were held by the deputy postmaster general as his perquisite.
In short, Mackenzie was emphatic in his declaration that the establishment was a poor substitute for a provincial post office, which would be regulated by law, and its revenues disposed of by the authority of the legislature. He gave some curious illustrations of the inequalities which marked the operation of the newspaper regulations.
While Mackenzie was in England, Joseph Hume secured the production of a number of documents relating to the Canadian post office, which the legislatures in Canada had tried in vain to obtain from Stayner. Among these was a statement showing the amount paid by the several newspaper publishers for the distribution of their papers by the post office. On looking over the list Mackenzie was surprised at the very moderate amounts paid by publishers of some of the most widely-circulated papers.
_The Montreal Gazette_, for instance, distributed nearly two thousand copies by post, but paid postage on only two hundred and fifty copies.
Mackenzie made some further inquiries, and found that all sorts of irregularities prevailed, which Stayner in the weakness of his position was fain to connive at. The publisher of one paper in Kingston told Mackenzie that he entered seventy-five copies as sent by post, while mailing four hundred copies; another reported sixty copies and sent three hundred. A third publisher, who objected to paying the usual charge of four shillings per copy per annum, was let off with two shillings and sixpence per copy; while a fourth publisher paid no postage at all for several years.
Until that time Mackenzie had been paying the regular charges for all copies of his newspaper--_The Colonial Advocate_--which he sent by mail.
But he determined to be no longer the victim of such barefaced discrimination, and he accordingly began to enter for postage only a part of the total issue distributed through the mails.
In order that he might not be open to a charge of dishonesty, and perhaps also to help in the exposure of a vicious system, Mackenzie told the postmaster at Toronto what he was doing, and at the same time published the facts in his newspaper. This, of course, could not be tolerated by Stayner, and he demanded from Mackenzie the full postage on all his papers sent through the mails.
Mackenzie refused to pay, but declared that if Stayner would allow the case to go before a jury in Toronto, Stayner might employ all the counsel in the colony to support his demand, and if the jury could be persuaded to render a verdict against him, he pledged himself to pay the demand and all expenses. The offer was, of course, declined and the claim was dropped.
In the course of a long examination, Stayner was taken over all the points in controversy between the postmaster general and the Canadian provinces. Dr. O'Callaghan,[246] who soon afterwards acquired notoriety as a leader in the rebellion, was chairman of the committee. He and his associates in the inquiry had sat on several earlier committees and were well versed in the points at issue.
With the aid of the documents produced, the O'Callaghan committee managed to elicit from Stayner a fairly complete statement of the position of the post office in the Canadas in 1834-1835. Asked as to his authority for appropriating to his own use the proceeds of the newspaper postage, he was unable to point to it. But he stated that he knew it had been repeatedly recognized by the head of the department in London, and he had never considered it incumbent upon him or even proper to inquire into the date or form of the authority.
To a committee convinced that everything appertaining to the post office bore the marks of illegality, this answer could not be satisfactory.
Stayner was consequently next asked whether he considered that any usage, precedent or custom could give him a right to tax any portion of His Majesty's subjects without the express consent of parliament. To this he replied in the negative, but added that he never doubted that the postmaster general, in permitting his deputy in Canada to send newspapers through the post for a compensation to himself, was borne out by law.
What the statute was which the postmaster general held to be his authority, Stayner could not, with confidence, say. But it occurred to him that it might be an act passed in 1763,[247] which confirmed certain officers attached to the principal secretaries of state and to the postmaster general, in the privilege which they long enjoyed of franking newspapers and other printed matter.
As a matter of fact, this was the statute cited by the postmaster general when required to produce his authority for allowing Stayner and other deputies to treat the proceeds from newspapers as their perquisites, and as we consider this act, we may admire the prudence with which Stayner declined an argument as to its sufficiency as authority for the practice.
Stayner was on firmer ground when he pointed out that the post office act had made no provision for the conveyance of newspapers, and that, as things stood, the only alternatives before the publishers were to pay the prohibitive letter rates on their newspapers, or to come to terms with him, under the permission of the postmaster general.
The committee were loath to leave this controversial advantage with Stayner and asked him whether, since the newspapers were carried in the mail bags, he paid from the newspaper postage any part of the mail couriers' wages. He said he did not, and then committed himself to the extraordinary proposition that it cost nothing to carry newspapers because they were in the same bags with the letters. The committee did not waste any time arguing such a point as that, but called the contractor for the conveyance of the mails between Montreal and Quebec, who testified that if he were relieved of the newspapers, he could carry the mails on horseback, at a saving of 200 a year.
The O'Callaghan committee in their report to the assembly--a report which was made on the 8th of March, 1836, invited attention in the first place to the large sums which were sent by the deputy postmaster general to England from the revenues of the Canadian post office. During the thirteen years ended in 1834, the large amount of 91,685 sterling had been remitted to the British treasury on this account, and the remittances for the last four years averaged annually 10,041 sterling.
These remittances, and the usage under which they were made, the committee denounced as a violation of the fundamental rights of the people of the colony, and as an instance of the disregard of the declaratory act of 1778, which had cost Great Britain her American colonies, "now the flourishing and happy United States of America."
Regarding the imperial act of 1834 as an admission that the British government had acted illegally in appropriating to its own use the surplus Canadian postal revenues, the committee assumed that the deputy postmaster general would cease to make remittances of Canadian revenues to England.
On discovering that this was not the case, the committee gave Stayner notice that the assembly would probably hold him personally responsible for any further remittances thus improperly made. Stayner, however, paid no attention to this warning, as he had but a short time before deposited $20,000 in the commissariat office for transmission to London.
Stayner's course in treating the newspaper postage as his perquisite came in for the strongest reprobation. The statutory authority which he ventured to put forward was easily shown to be no authority at all, and the committee declared it to be a monstrous absurdity that the head of the department should, in defiance of all law, presume to fix the charges on newspapers, and put the proceeds in his pocket.
From the statement furnished by Stayner, it appeared that no less than 9550 currency had been appropriated by him from this source during the six years he had held the office of deputy postmaster general, and the committee suggested that, as he had no shadow of right to any part of this large sum, legal proceedings should be taken by the province to recover the amount from him.
The total income which Stayner acknowledged having received was beyond belief. In each of the three years ending with and including 1834, his emoluments amounted on the average to 3185 currency. These emoluments were described graphically by the committee as nearly equal to the salary of the governor general, three times more than the salary of any of the puisne judges in the province, almost equal to the whole amount paid as compensation to the one hundred and thirty-seven postmasters in Upper Canada, and one-third more than the total amount received by the one hundred and seventeen postmasters in Lower Canada.
The committee endeavoured to convict Stayner of having misled the postmaster general as to the magnitude of his income. They were unsuccessful in this attempt, as the postmaster general was quite aware of the amount Stayner was receiving, and had expressed no disapproval.
The committee as a conclusion to its report urged that the provincial government should take over the control of the provincial post office, and they submitted the draft of a bill which they had prepared for the purpose of sanctioning the action recommended. The house of assembly adopted the report of the committee, and having passed the bill, sent it up to the legislative council for approval.
In the legislative council the bill was rejected. The majority of the council were Stayner's friends, and they saw that he had a full chance to express his views before a committee appointed by the council. He set the draft bill prepared by the postmaster general beside the assembly bill, and effectively contrasted the strong points of the former with the weakness of the latter.