In the following year, 1840, there was an unquestionable surplus of revenue over expenditure; consequently no demand was made upon the legislature. In 1841, the friction, which was certain to develop when Howe's loose methods were subjected to any strain, began to make itself felt.
In April of that year, Howe advised the lieutenant governor, Lord Falkland, that the funds available for the payment of the post office expenditure were deficient to the extent of 546.[271] He, at the same time, submitted to the lieutenant governor his correspondence with the general post office in London, from which it appeared that the general post office, fearing that the omission of the legislature to make any provision for the service would lead to a deficiency, intimated that it might be necessary to make some curtailments, and asked whether some of the less productive routes might not be discontinued.
Howe, following his usual practice, had consulted with several members of the legislature, and being satisfied that the legislature would make up any shortage that arose, concluded that there would be no necessity of abandoning any of the lines.
It was only when the legislature was prorogued without making provision for a possible shortage, that Howe submitted the question to the governor. Falkland was rather embarrassed by the responsibility thus unnecessarily thrust upon him. But as he was of opinion that it would cause much inconvenience to stop any of the mail routes, he directed the amount of the shortage to be paid. The lieutenant governor, however, in relating the circumstances to the colonial secretary, took occasion to complain of Howe's methods.
The communications respecting the post office passed him by entirely, unless some trouble arose which made an appeal necessary. In the present case, if he had been made acquainted with the circumstances in time, he would have laid them before the legislature, and left them to decide whether any of the services were to be dropped, or the deficit made up.
As a result, Howe was admonished that his irregular practice must cease, and that when recourse to the legislature was necessary, he should approach them through the lieutenant governor alone.
In 1842, the situation became more acute. The assembly had before them the accounts of 1841, in which figured the additional expenses due to the ambitious transatlantic steamship scheme. At the best, the revenues from the inland services were no more than sufficient to meet its expenses, and the increase in the cost of the conveyance between Halifax and Pictou from 285 a year to 1937 (1550 sterling), and the additional expense in the Halifax post office from 625 a year to 1694 due to a large augmentation in the staff, involved the legislature in a situation, to which they were disinclined to submit.
The trouble was precipitated by a letter from Howe to the lieutenant governor, informing him that, as the sum of 1143 had been advanced by him from the packet postage, which belonged to the British treasury, and as the legislature had appropriated only 550 to meet this advance, there was still the sum of 593 due to His Majesty.
The assembly to whom Howe's communication was referred, took the opportunity of reviewing the whole situation. It was beyond doubt that, in 1839, the internal postal service was self-supporting. This condition was disturbed to the detriment of the financial position of the post office by burdening it with the total expense of the Pictou service, which was maintained principally for the benefit of New Brunswick and Canada, and of the Halifax post office, which since the establishment of the ocean steam service for all the colonies was in reality much more an imperial than a provincial institution.
As, in justice, the inland colonies were chargeable with the major part of the outlay for the Pictou service, and the maintenance of Halifax post office should properly be defrayed from the packet postage, the legislature declined to meet the demand made upon it by the post office.
The lieutenant governor was in full sympathy with the legislature, and after fortifying himself with the opinions of his law officers as to the legal aspects of the case, appealed to the governor general to induce the Canadian government to take on themselves the proper share of the charge.
The Canadian government for the reasons given could not see the propriety of their taking on themselves any part of the expense of conveying mails to their outport at Quebec, and the British government were powerless to bring pressure on the Canadians, since the treasury was in receipt annually of large remittances from Stayner as surplus post office revenues, which the British government, by their act of 1834, admitted to belong to the colonies, and which only awaited colonial legislation to be handed over to the several legislatures.
The treasury was willing also as a measure of grace to allow the colonial legislatures to retain the part of the packet postage collected in the colonies, if they would only adopt the scheme involved in the act of 1834. But it was not prepared to admit that any part of the packet was, as a matter of right, chargeable with the maintenance of the post office at Halifax or of the Pictou coach service, and as it was becoming plain that the scheme of making Halifax the distributing centre for the Canadas, was not proving the success they hoped for, they determined to inquire as to the feasibility of having a port in the United States utilized in the exchange between Canada and Great Britain.
To that end, an official of the British post office, W. J. Page, was sent to Nova Scotia to investigate this subject, and at the same time to make a thorough inquiry into the condition of the Nova Scotia post office, which had been animadverted upon rather severely by the royal commission, in its report of 1841.
By means of Page's reports and of the report of this commission, we are enabled to give a clear account of the Nova Scotia post office in the beginning of the forties. There were eighteen post offices in the province at this period, and fifty-one sub-offices. The mails were carried on the route from Halifax to Pictou and St. John three times a week in summer and twice a week in winter.
From Pictou the mails were carried to Antigonishe twice a week, and with the same frequency from Halifax to Annapolis. Mails were carried in all directions throughout the province, but, with the exceptions mentioned, only once a week.
The management of this considerable system was in the hands of the deputy postmaster general and his assistant. It was impossible with the work demanding their attention in Halifax, and the deficiency of facilities for travel, that these two could give any attention to the offices which were not under their immediate eye, and consequently all attempts to exercise control over the operation of the system came by degrees to be abandoned. When postmasters were appointed, all the instructions they received were a few short directions from the deputy postmaster general, or from an outgoing predecessor, whose knowledge was a combination made up of the official instructions and the interpretations placed upon them, when occasion arose that required some action or decision on his part.
The way offices--those peculiar products of the Maritime provinces--excited the ridicule of English and Canadian trained officials. Page, in a letter to the secretary of the general post office, expressed his despair of comprehending the varieties of origin or practice of these offices. Not one in ten of the keepers of these offices were appointed by Howe; nor did he or any one in his office know the names of many of them, though Howe considered the offices to have been sanctioned by him.
What happened was like this: a postmaster would write to Howe telling him that there ought to be a house for leaving letters at, in such or such a village or settlement. If any person were mentioned as willing to take charge of the letters, Howe generally agreed to his being appointed, and considered the matter settled. If no particular person was mentioned, Howe agreed to the suggestion that there should be a receiving house in the place indicated, and left the selection to the postmaster.
The whole affair was considered as a private matter between postmaster and way office keeper; no letter bills or forms of any description were ever supplied to the way office keepers, and so long as they paid to the postmasters the amount of postage due on letters sent to them for delivery, the very existence of these offices was ignored.
These way offices were known locally as twopenny offices, that is, the keepers charged twopence on every letter passing through their hands. An instance will explain the mode of operation in these offices. A gentleman living in Port Hood, on the west coast of Cape Breton, stated that he had sent a double letter weighing less than half an ounce a distance of fifty miles; and as it had to pass through five way offices, the charge was one shilling and eightpence (thirty-three cents). He received letters from England, which cost one shilling and fourpence (twenty-seven cents) from England to the Straits of Canso; but the conveyance from that point to his home, a distance of twenty-six miles, cost one shilling and fourpence more.
The anomalies were due partly to the mixed character of the control of the system in the province, and partly to the inability of the deputy postmaster general, owing to his lack of efficient help, to supervise the system. Howe was under the authority both of the postmaster general in England, and of the provincial government, which provided for the maintenance of a number of offices, which would not have been sanctioned by the postmaster general on account of the expense.
Illegal conveyance of letters was the rule in this province, as well as in all the others. The great proportion of the correspondence between the towns and villages on the long coast was carried by trading vessels.
On some of the main routes, notably from Halifax to Pictou and to Annapolis, there were fast four-horse coaches. They travelled eight miles an hour in summer and five in winter. They were employed to carry the mails, but it never happened that the mail bags contained as many letters as the pockets of the passengers.
In Cape Breton there was not a single carriage road in the island. Most of the roads were mere bridle paths, and in many parts there were no roads of any kind. It took five days to carry the mail bag from Halifax to Sydney during the summer, and from eleven to eighteen in the winter.
The deputy postmaster general had a salary of 400 a year, which was supplemented by the amounts collected as newspaper postage. In 1841, the amount of this perquisite was 330 a year. It was a cause of complaint on the part of rival publishers that the _Nova Scotian_, the leading newspaper in the province, paid no postage. As the circulation of this paper--1400 copies a week--was more than double that of any other paper in the province, the grievance was a real one.
In explanation of the exemption, Howe stated that for ten years before he purchased the _Nova Scotian_, the proprietor, Joseph Howe, had assisted him in the management of the office for eleven months while the deputy postmaster general was in England, taking full management of the provincial system. For these services Joseph Howe had asked no compensation, and the deputy postmaster general had therefore taken no remuneration for mailing the newspapers.[272]
There were only two towns in the province where letters were delivered by carriers--Halifax and Yarmouth. In Halifax, the city was divided between two carriers, whose pay consisted of the fees they were entitled to take from the recipients of the letters they delivered, at a penny a letter. They attempted to charge the same sum for the delivery of each newspaper, but many persons would not pay the fee. The carriers received 2 10_s._ and 2 a week respectively. Yarmouth also had two carriers, whose penny fees gave them each about 12 10_s._ a year.
The relations between the deputy postmaster general and the provincial government were the subject of much critical comment on the part of Page. The fact that the government contributed to the maintenance of the less remunerative routes and post offices gave the executive and the assembly a colour of title to interfere in the management of the post office, which was exercised, in Page's opinion, beyond all due bounds.
The governor's secretary was in the habit of giving Howe orders, and if Howe showed any hesitation in complying with them, he became offensively peremptory. Investigations into complaints against postmasters were taken into the hands of a committee of the assembly, in disregard of Howe's authority. As it appeared to Page, there was a determined effort to set aside the authority of the postmaster general and to take over the management of the system by the government. Howe at Page's instance, took a firm stand and informed the governor that, in case of conflict between the directions he received from England, and those given by the governor, it was the directions from St. Martins-le-Grand he was bound to obey.
The disappointment in the general post office over the failure of the plan to remove the difficulties with the government of Nova Scotia, which was largely due to the hopeless complication of the accounts, changed the attitude of the officials at home towards Howe from one of good will to one of censure, which reached the point that nearly determined them to dismiss Howe.
Page pointed out the injustice of such a step. Howe's position was one in which it was impossible to escape criticism from either the provincial authorities or his official superiors, whose views were frequently in sharp antagonism to one another. The part of the provincial system under Howe as deputy of the postmaster general in England had its accounting scheme, and the part, which was maintained by the legislature, had another, separate and distinct.
But the passing of letters between the recognized post offices and those established by the legislature, gave rise to accounts between the two systems under Howe's management, which it was practically impossible to adjust satisfactorily, unless by the adoption of a give-and-take system, to which neither the general post office nor the legislature showed any disposition.
Howe's death in January 1843 closed the question as to whether or not his administration was deserving of censure. It also brought to an end an era, within which the postal service had expanded from the single route extending from Halifax to Annapolis and Digby, over which the mail courier travelled but once a month, to the network of routes whose ramifications covered every part of the province.
Judged by the only possible test, the administration of the Canadian service under Heriot, Sutherland and Stayner, the administration of the two Howes must be pronounced a conspicuous success. The deputies in Canada were faithful to their superiors in London, but they were so at the expense of the popularity of the postal service in the provinces.
The Howes managed to extend their service equally with their Canadian colleagues, and at the same time held the good will of the authorities in the province. Howe was a man who left no enemies. The governor, in discussing the postal difficulties of the province with Page, expressed the utmost good will for Howe himself, the only ground of complaint against him being an embarrassing intimacy with the members of the legislature.
Page, who visited Nova Scotia for the purpose of inspecting Howe's administration, bore testimony, before Howe's death, to his kindly disposition and to the high respect in which he was held, officially and in private life. His rectitude in all his relations was never in question.[273]
Howe's successor was Arthur Woodgate, who had served in the post office in Jersey. Woodgate administered the post office in Nova Scotia until the provincial system was absorbed in that of the dominion, when the confederation of the several provinces took place; until 1851, he was, as were his predecessors, deputy of the postmaster general in England; after that date he was postmaster general for the province of Nova Scotia.
An immediate consequence of the death of Howe was the removal of the post office in Halifax from the site it had occupied to the Dalhousie college building. The merchants objected to the continuance of the post office in its former situation, and in the search of a more convenient location, it was observed that the ground floor of the college building, which was occupied as a tavern, offered advantages, which satisfied the mercantile community.
A lease was effected for the new quarters on the 6th of July, 1844, and the post office surveyor reported to the secretary that there was at the disposal of the department, a large and capacious room solely for the purposes of the inland sorting office; a delivery office, and a large room for sorting papers, all on the ground floor; while in the second storey there was ample accommodation for the deputy postmaster general and his staff.[274]
The question of a reduction in the postage rates engaged the attention of the legislature every session, after the beneficial results of penny postage in Great Britain became known. In March 1842, the assembly, which was at this time under the speakership of Joseph Howe, petitioned to have the charges taken entirely off newspapers and pamphlets. As newspapers were almost the only vehicles of information in the province, and the postal charges were collected entirely from the rural parts, they were a heavy burden on people who could least bear it.
The postmaster general in reply stated that the proposition to relieve newspapers altogether from postage could not be considered, but a reduction in the charge was at that time being considered by the treasury. Newspapers were increasing so rapidly, at the existing rates, that it was becoming a question, with the bad state of the roads, as to how to provide for their transmission. Pamphlets were being charged as letters in England, and it would be impossible to sanction their free conveyance in the colonies.
At the same time the assembly requested the lieutenant governor to have inquiries made as to the feasibility and effect on the revenue of a uniform rate on letters of fourpence per half ounce within the province.
The deputy postmaster general, to whom the question was referred, was strongly opposed to the proposition. He was convinced that the increase in the correspondence would be slight, and that, at the rate mentioned, the revenue would not be sufficient to pay the cost of any one of the principal routes in the province.
At the beginning of 1844, the changes, already mentioned, of charging letters by weight instead of number of enclosures, and of charging newspapers a halfpenny per sheet, came into operation in the Maritime provinces. These ameliorations went as far as the officials of the post office were prepared to recommend, in the existing state of the finances of the provincial post office. The assembly in Nova Scotia were persistent in their demand for a reduction in the charges on letters.
They had before them the evidence taken that year in England as to the effect of penny postage, which had then been in operation three years.
The resolutions the assembly adopted were fully borne out by that evidence. They resolved that the experience of the parent state had clearly established that "the introduction of a uniform rate of penny postage has had a beneficial effect upon the social and commercial classes of the United Kingdom; has largely increased the number of letters passing through the post office and prevented the illicit transmission of letters by private opportunities, and that its effect has been fully counterbalanced by the other important consequences resulting from it."[275]
The assembly were therefore satisfied that a fourpenny rate established under the same regulations as to the use of postage stamps, would promote the public interests, not add materially to the labour of management, and ultimately increase the public revenue.
Coupled with this resolution was another to the effect that it would be desirable to have the provincial post office under the control and management of the legislature. With this point, the secretary of the post office dealt at length in a memorandum to the postmaster general.
In his opinion very great advantage resulted from the present system, by which the control of the post offices in the greater part of the British colonies was vested in the postmaster general. To abandon it would be extremely prejudicial, and would have the effect of breaking up the existing organization (which he was at that time endeavouring to make as uniform as possible for the whole empire) into various conflicting systems framed according to the views and feelings of each separate colony, to the great detriment of the general interests of the empire.
Loud complaints, the postmaster general was reminded by the secretary, were being made respecting the post offices in Australia, where four different scales of rates of postage were in operation, resulting in inconveniences which a recently appointed commission of inquiry were authorized to obviate. He regarded it as a great advantage that one uniform system of management and one uniform scale of rates of postage should prevail in the North American provinces, in Newfoundland and in the West Indies.
The reply of the postmaster general, which was based on the secretary's report,[276] received the cordial assent of the legislature. After reviewing the condition of the colonial post offices in their relation to the imperial system, the postal committee of the legislature declared that "the promptness and celerity of intercourse is unrivalled in the world, and has greatly contributed to the commercial advancement of the nation. So complicated is the British postal system that, without the details, it is not possible to obtain a conception of its present perfection. Nowhere is inviolability of letters more respected than in England and the United States, and by the constitution of the latter, adopted in 1789, exclusive power is given to congress to establish post offices and post roads, thus preventing the difficulties which would have resulted from leaving this department to the several states."