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As for Canada's being at any expense for this service, the commission scouted the idea. The Cunard contract called for the transportation of mails between Great Britain and Canada, which was to be effected by two steamers, one running between Liverpool and Halifax, and the other between Pictou and Quebec. Any expense there might be for overland conveyance should fall upon the packet postage, that is, it should be a charge upon the postage collected by the British post office for the transmission of letters between Great Britain and Canada.

The British post office took a somewhat curious course in the difficulty. It resented the criticism of the commissioners, and sanctioned the agreement made by the deputy in Halifax, for a term of eight years. It made no effort to convince the Canadian authorities of the error in their views, which would indeed have been impossible; and, on the other hand, it refused to allow the additional expense to be thrown upon the packet postage. There was but one alternative--Nova Scotia must bear the whole charge. And that was the decision of the postmaster general.

The resentment throughout Nova Scotia at the injustice of this decision, and the manifest inability of the provincial post office to carry the added burden determined the postmaster general to make an effort to put an end to the situation. In 1842 he sent an officer of the department to Halifax to inquire into the whole provincial system, instructing him to give his special attention to the question of the expediency of continuing the use of the port of Halifax as the entrepot for the Canadian mails.

The thing to be avoided was the long carriage by land, and the agent was directed to consider the ports of St. John, New Brunswick and Boston with this end in view. Boston was regarded with particular favour on account of the railway lines, which were being extended inland from that port. St. John was dismissed from consideration on a report from the admiralty that until some progress had been made in the survey of the bay of Fundy, especially of its tides and soundings, it would be very hazardous to send the mails by that route.

On the question of the comparative advantages of the Halifax and Boston routes there was practical unanimity in Canada. All classes of the mail-using public were agreed as to the superiority of the Boston route.

The editors of newspapers complained that the British newspapers on which they depended for their foreign news--newspapers which were transmitted by way of Halifax--were useless by the time they reached Canada, as the news they contained had been received from New York or Boston several days earlier.

As for the objection to having the exchange of mails between Great Britain and Canada carried on through a foreign country, the publishers made light of it. The mails from England for India, were carried across the Continent through France and Italy; and there was no reason why the mails from England for Canada should not be carried through the United States.

These views were strongly presented by Stayner, and reinforced by the secretary of the post office, who laid them before the postmaster general. The Cunards also rendered assistance to the same end. They represented to the postmaster general that the service proved to be much more expensive than they had anticipated when they undertook the contract, and that the steamer on the St. Lawrence was a very heavy burden. In discussing the question of an increased subsidy, the company expressed their willingness to regard relief from the river service as equivalent to 10,000 a year.

These concurrent appeals, together with the fact that the change in the seat of government from Kingston to Montreal, established the governor in the city which would derive the maximum of benefit from the Boston connection, decided the government to make Boston the landing port for the Canadian mails; and the British minister at Washington was instructed to open negotiations for an arrangement by which the British mails would be permitted to cross the territory of the United States.[260]

It had long been an object of desire with the United States government to retain the hold its geographical situation has given it upon the correspondence between Great Britain and Canada. Before steam service was a practicable scheme, the president in a message to congress suggested that, to that end, the sailing packets should be put under post office regulations, and a greater degree of security to the mails thereby effected.

The United States government consequently were prepared to accept very moderate terms. They based their offer on the terms of the contract between the British and French governments for the conveyance of the Indian mails from Calais on the Channel to Marseilles on the Mediterranean. The British government paid the French government two francs per ounce of letters and ten centimes for each newspaper transmitted across French territory, and as the distance from Boston to St. Johns in Lower Canada was rather less than half that from Calais to Marseilles, they proposed that the British government should pay them half the rates paid to the French government.

These rates were regarded by the postmaster general of England as unusually favourable, and the proposal of the United States government was at once accepted. Under this arrangement, the postmaster general calculated that, besides the great saving in time that would be effected, there would be a reduction in the charges for the inland conveyance of the mails to and from Canada of 4600 per annum.

The course of conveyance across the territory of the United States was to be, in summer, from Boston to Burlington, Vermont, towards which a railway line was approaching completion, and from Burlington to St.

Johns by steamer on lake Champlain. In the winter, the mails were to be carried from Boston to Highgate, Vermont, where they would be taken over by couriers attached to the Canadian post office. The time occupied would, under usual conditions, be forty-eight hours between Boston and St. Johns, and fifty-three hours between Boston and Highgate.

Thus was the great experiment brought to its appointed end. It had its origin in one of those imperial impulses, which seem to come most frequently from the colonies, and which now and then carry the Briton off his feet. But, as conditions stood, the scheme was foredoomed to failure. It was not until the construction of the Canadian Pacific railway in 1889, across the state of Maine between Montreal and St.

John, that a Canadian ocean port was able to enter into successful competition with a United States port, as the point of exchange for mails passing between Great Britain and Canada.

While the plans for substituting steam for sailing vessels were being brought to maturity, the question of a substantial reduction in the postage between Great Britain and the colonies in North America were being discussed.[261] Stayner pointed out that it would be useless to enter upon an expensive scheme for reducing the time occupied in conveying the mails between Great Britain and Canada, unless the postage were brought down to a figure that would place the steamship service within reach of the farmers in western Canada.

As Sydenham observed, the new settlers, while living in great material comfort, had little money at their disposal. To them it was an impossibility to pay the postage--four shillings or more--which had accumulated on a letter on its way from the inland parts of the United Kingdom to the backwoods in which they were making homes for themselves.

They were served, and far from inefficiently, by the American ocean sailing packets, which left Liverpool weekly for New York; and unless the steam line were able to provide for the exchange of their letters at rates as low as they were paying, they would no more patronize the new line than they had the ten-gun sailing brigs, by which the British packet service was then carried on.

Stayner, with full knowledge of the conditions he had to meet, was convinced that the first step towards an effective reform was to sweep away the cumulative rates made up of the inland charges in the United Kingdom, the ocean postage and the inland colonial charge; and replace them by one fixed rate which would carry the letter from any post office in the United Kingdom to any post office in the colonies. When he first laid the proposition before the postmaster general, the Duke of Richmond, he recommended that this uniform rate should be two shillings a single letter.

But after some years' opportunity for reflection, aided beyond doubt by the argument of Rowland Hill for penny postage in Great Britain, Stayner concluded that his proposed rate was too high, and that, at one shilling and sixpence, or even one shilling and threepence, the increased patronage of the line by the public in the motherland and the colonies, would bring about an actual augmentation of the revenue.

How great the reduction in the charges would be, if Stayner's proposition were carried into effect, may be gathered from the fact that one of the elements making up the total postage was much in excess of the whole sum suggested by Stayner. On the supposition that the steamships landed the Canadian mails at Halifax, every letter brought by that means to Toronto would be subject to a charge of two shillings and ninepence for the conveyance from Halifax to Toronto, to say nothing of the shilling charge for its passage from Liverpool to Halifax, and the postage from the office of posting in the United Kingdom to Liverpool.

While negotiations with Cunard were still in progress, and the colonies waited expectantly for what was to be achieved by the new service, Stayner was much surprised and gratified to receive from the general post office in London a circular addressed to the postmasters in the United Kingdom stating that the postmaster general had decided to do away altogether with the inland rate or rather to incorporate it with the ocean rate which thenceforward would be one shilling.

This was beyond any anticipations Stayner had formed, and he lost no time in apprizing the public in Canada of the boon conferred upon them.

There was rejoicing in Canada over the prospect of easy communication with the mother country, and the postmaster general received many commendations on his statesmanlike measure.[262]

But the rejoicing was not of long continuance. With the first intimation at the general post office of the announcement made in Canada there was despatched a letter from the secretary informing Stayner that he had quite mistaken the purport of the circular. Though sent to Stayner for his information, it was not intended to apply to Canada. The intention was merely to take off the British inland postage, and to leave the colonial inland postage to be collected as before. The reduction, in reality, amounted to very little, as the bulk of the postage on letters from Great Britain to Canada passing by way of Halifax had been that part levied for the conveyance from Halifax to the office of delivery in Canada.

Stayner was in no way to blame for the interpretation he placed on the circular, and he had the satisfaction of knowing that his misconception made the continuance of the high postage impossible. The public on both sides of the ocean had tasted the blessings of communication with their relatives on the other side, at an expense not considered beyond their means, and they were determined not to have the benefit withdrawn.

Accordingly when Poulett Thomson, afterwards Earl of Sydenham, came out as governor general with special instructions to remove all legitimate causes of dissatisfaction, he addressed himself to this question, and after a conference with Stayner, wrote to the colonial secretary urging the adoption of the shilling rate.

The colonial secretary submitted the governor general's views to the postmaster general, and in practical coincidence with the sailing of the first steamer under the Cunard contract, instructions were issued to make the total charge on letters to the British North American colonies one shilling, if the letter was addressed to Halifax, and one shilling and twopence, if its destination was inland, however distant.[263]

At the same time, a change of great importance was made in the principle on which the postage was based. It had been the practice to charge postage, according to the number of enclosures the letter contained.

When penny postage was introduced in England a few months previously, one of the features of the new plan was the establishment of the weight principle in determining the charge on a letter, in substitution of the principle under which letters were taxed according to the number of their contents.

The operation of the new plan in Great Britain caused much confusion and loss in the correspondence with the colonies. The British or Irish people, who had become accustomed to having their postage fixed by the application of the rate of one penny for each half ounce, could not in many cases be made to understand why the same principle did not apply to their letters to their friends and relatives beyond the seas.

Hence many letters weighing less than half an ounce were sent to Canada, which on examination were found to contain enclosures, and the postage was, in accordance with the regulations, doubled or even trebled, though their weight would not call for a charge of more than one shilling and twopence.

Poulett Thomson drew attention to the obvious embarrassment occasioned by the application of the two different principles, and he had the satisfaction of finding a ready acquiescence in his views on the part of the postal authorities at home. Accordingly, by the treasury minute of July 6th, 1840, the rate on letters conveyed by direct packet from any post office in the United Kingdom to Halifax was made one shilling the half ounce. If, for any other post office, the rate was one shilling and twopence.

FOOTNOTES:

[253] _Report on the affairs of British North America_ (Oxford, 1912), p. 143.

[254] Stayner to governor general's secretary, December 8, 1837 (_Can.

Arch._, Br. P.O. Transcripts).

[255] Maberly to postmaster general, March 29, 1838, and accompanying papers (_Can. Arch._, Br. P.O. Transcripts), and Q. 402-409 _passim_.

[256] _Can. Arch._, Q. 416, p. 49.

[257] Colonial office to post office, May 25, 1838 (_Can. Arch._, Br.

P.O. Transcripts).

[258] _Speeches and Public Letters of Joseph Howe_, 1909, I. 188.

[259] The succession of measures taken regarding the Cunard service may be followed in the Br. P.O. Transcripts for 1838-1839-1840.

[260] Maberly to postmaster general, April 3 and September 28, 1844, with accompanying papers (Br. P.O. Transcripts).

[261] The papers on the reduction of the ocean postage rates are gathered together as accompaniments to a letter from Mr. Poulett Thomson, the governor general, to Lord Russell, of April 16, 1840. See Q. 271, p. 224.

[262] Stayner to Maberly, May 12, 1839, and accompanying documents (Br.

P.O. Transcripts).

[263] Treasury Minute, July 6, 1840 (Br. P.O. Transcripts).

CHAPTER XIII

Diminution of powers of deputy postmaster general--Commission on post office appointed--Its report--Efforts to secure reduction of postal charges.

The arrival of Poulett Thomson as governor general marks the passing of the uncontrolled authority of Stayner as administrator of the post office in the Canadas. By the terms of their commissions, the deputies of the postmaster general in the colonies, were responsible to the postmaster general alone for the conduct of the affairs of the post offices within their jurisdiction.

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