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 L200 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 L91,685 sterling had
been remitted to the British treasury on this account, and the
remittances for the last four years averaged annually L10,041 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
L9550 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 L3185 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.
The imperial bill, Stayner emphasised before the committee of the
council, dealt with British North America as one territory as regards
regulations and charges, and in his opinion, unless the several
provinces were to be so regarded, an efficient service among the
provinces themselves, and between the provinces and other countries,
would be impossible.
In order to encourage correspondence between the distant parts of the
colonies, the imperial bill fixed the comparatively low rate of eighteen
pence for all distances beyond five hundred miles. Thus a letter could
be sent from Amherstburg to Halifax or Charlottetown for that sum. If
each colony had its own separate postal administration the charge on
letters passing between those places would, in the most favourable
circumstances, cost two or three times as much. Stayner was far from
agreeing that, in all its details, the imperial bill was perfect, but he
was convinced that the principle on which it was based was the only
practicable one.
The great objection Stayner saw in the bill of the assembly was that it
was a local bill operative only within the province. Intercourse between
Lower Canada and the other provinces had to be provided for, since where
there are several states under one supreme head, the free exchange of
correspondence between them is indispensable.
The British government, whose interests in the different provinces
required that communication between them and the mother country should
be uninterrupted, could never consent, Stayner was sure, to any local
arrangements by which those communications might be jeopardized. The
cost of communication between province and province would be
prohibitive, and the consequence would be moral isolation. The separate
states of the American Union, jealous as they were of any impairment of
their rights, recognized the necessity of a common postal service.
Stayner dwelt convincingly on the technical difficulties of accounting
and distributing the charges on inter-provincial correspondence, and on
correspondence between Canada and Great Britain. As it happened at the
time, most of the letters sent between Canada and England passed by way
of the United States. But that was a courtesy on the part of the United
States government which might be terminated at any time, and then the
Canadian provinces would be entirely dependent on the province by the
sea.
If each province charged its full local rates on correspondence passing
through it, and Stayner could see no reason why any of the provinces
should favour its neighbours at the expense of its own people, the
charge on a letter sent from Upper Canada to England would not be less
than six or seven shillings, while under the British draft bill, the
charge would scarcely ever exceed two shillings.
The legislative council adopted Stayner's reasoning entirely. It
admitted that if the post office were an institution of merely local
utility, there would be little to amend in the bill sent up by the
assembly. Since, however, there were several provinces concerned, whose
concurrent action was essential, the conflict of interest which must
inevitably arise would make the harmonious working of the separate parts
of the system difficult, if not impossible.
As an instance of the difficulties springing out of the divergence of
interest among the provinces, the council recalled the fact that it
became necessary to invite the intervention of the mother country to
settle the apportionment of the customs revenues between the provinces
of Upper and Lower Canada. The council suggested to the governor general
that if this line of reasoning were found acceptable, a satisfactory
settlement of the whole question would be reached by requiring the
deputy postmaster general to furnish annually full information as to the
conditions, financial and other, of the post office.
The free transmission of the correspondence of members of the
legislature, the council urged, should be provided for. The deputy
postmaster general should be removable on the joint address of the two
houses of the legislature; the salaries of all officials should be
fixed, and perquisites of every kind withdrawn. Finally such alterations
should be made in the rates of postage, such post offices established
and such arrangements adopted for the regulation and management of the
service, as were called for by the joint address of the two houses.
The plans elaborated by the British post office for the settlement of
the colonial difficulties found no more favour in Upper Canada than in
the other provinces. The assembly condemned the draft bill as unworthy
of consideration. The terms in which the scheme was dismissed by the
assembly were sufficiently slighting, but the colonial secretary was not
in the mood to be resentful.
Lord Glenelg was impressed with the substantial justice of the claims of
the assemblies in the two provinces, and would not make a stand on a
point of manners. As Sir Francis Bond Head was about to come to Upper
Canada to take up the lieutenant governorship in succession to Colbome,
Glenelg, in his letter of instructions[248] directed Head to make every
effort to bring the post office question to a satisfactory conclusion.
Noticing the opinion given by the assembly on the postmaster general's
scheme of settlement, Glenelg thought it right to say that the bill had
the very careful consideration of the postmaster general before being
sent to the several provinces. The government, however, had no desire to
urge the adoption of any measure to which well-founded objections
existed. They were content that the bill should be withdrawn, to make
way for any better bill that might be proposed by the house.
The assembly might find, on approaching the subject more closely,
continued Glenelg, that unexpected difficulties would crop up,
particularly with regard to intercourse by post with places beyond the
limits of the province. The lieutenant governor was authorized to assent
to any judicious and practicable measure which the house might
incorporate in a bill, and to regard as of no importance, when opposed
to the general convenience of the public, any considerations of
patronage or revenue derivable from this source.
Notwithstanding this conciliatory statement, the house proceeded along
the same lines as those followed by the assembly in Lower Canada. They
drew up a series of resolutions[249] providing for the establishment of
a post office department with headquarters in Toronto. Specified sums
were allotted for the maintenance of a head office, and for the salaries
of the postmaster general and his staff. The rates were fixed on letters
and newspapers, and the percentage of revenue to be allowed postmasters
as salaries was defined.
The house was unsparing in its condemnation of Stayner. They estimated
that during the ten years preceding, the large sum of L48,000 had been
withdrawn from the province through the exactions of the post office, an
amount which they said would have sufficed to establish five district
banks, suited to the wants of as many different sections of the country.
The advantages of a provincial establishment appeared to the house to be
very great. A large amount of wealth would be kept in the province,
which was sent to Quebec, either for transmission to England, or to make
up the perquisites of officials; post offices could be opened wherever
they were required, and no distant part of the province would be without
the means of cheap and convenient accommodation; postmasters would be
better paid, and the postage on letters and newspapers would be reduced;
and extravagance could be checked and abuses corrected.
The house was fully aware of the objections to a local post office
system, but in their opinion those objections were not to be mentioned
beside the numerous advantages the provincial post office would provide.
It would be far easier for the department to open accounts with the
present or any other post office department that might be organized,
than it was to arrange with the United States for the interchange of
correspondence with that country, and yet there was a very extensive
exchange between Canada and the United States without the aid of any law
whatever.
In considering the terms of a post office bill, the house had before it
a list of conditions--thirty-one in number--which a committee
recommended for consideration. Many of these were obvious. Others
concerned matters of detail. Some were trivial.
One peculiar condition was that L100 a year should be allotted for the
purchase of books and instruments, which might be useful in helping to
keep the roads in a proper state of repair. The plans for the
establishment of a post office department in Upper Canada did not reach
completion, as the assembly was dissolved a month after the resolutions
were adopted, in consequence of its refusal to vote supplies.
The termination of these agitations in the assemblies of Upper and Lower
Canada, mark the close of a period in the relations between the
provincial legislatures and the post office. The resolutions which were
directed against the constitutional status of the post office, and the
demands for separate provincial establishments ceased at this point.
This was due rather to the disappearance of the opponents of the
existing system than to the removal of the causes for complaint.
The Lower Canadian assembly held a session of less than a fortnight at
the end of September and the beginning of October 1836, and another of a
week in August 1837, when it was dissolved, not to be resumed. During
those sessions the affairs of the post office were not mentioned. In
Upper Canada the election, which followed upon the dissolution of May
1836, resulted in a great victory for the government party.
Before resuming the narrative of events in the British North American
provinces, it will be convenient to see how the late proceedings were
regarded by the home government. Lord Gosford, the governor general, in
transmitting to the colonial secretary the bill framed by the assembly
of Lower Canada, observed that it was intended as a substitute for the
imperial bill of 1834, which did not suit the ideas of the house.
One of the reasons adduced against the post office was that the money
which the deputy postmaster general sent to England was the produce of
an illegal tax levied in violation of the act of 1778. In December 1835,
some of the members of the assembly waited on Gosford, and requested him
to stop the remittance of about L3000 which was being made by Stayner to
the department in England.
Gosford declined to take such a step for reasons which he set forth. The
members, also, asked that the governor should take measures to recover
from Stayner the sums which he was shown to have taken as newspaper
postage. Gosford replied that as this allowance was permitted by the
imperial department, and had been sanctioned by the Duke of Richmond as
late as 1831, he could not assume to do what they asked, but he would
bring the subject to the attention of the home government.
The whole arrangement regarding newspapers appeared to Gosford to be
improper. He was of opinion that the emoluments received by Stayner were
unreasonably large, and that the practice of allowing the deputy
postmaster general to draw a considerable private income from the public
business was wrong in principle.
But the post office in London was already in possession of the Lower
Canadian bill. Stayner had sent a copy to the secretary immediately on
its adoption by the assembly, and before the legislative council had had
time to consider and reject it.
At the post office the receipt of the bill with the notice that it would
go into operation on the 1st of May, 1836, gave rise to great
perturbation among the officials. Freeling, in passing the bill on to
the postmaster general, declared it to be perhaps the most important
document he had ever received.[250] It was neither more nor less than an
entire suppression of the postmaster general's patent, and of the powers
of an act of parliament, authorizing the levying of certain rates of
postage and the payment of the amount of all such postages into His
Majesty's exchequer.
Freeling was a very old man--he was born in 1764--on the point of
retiring from the charge, which he had held for forty-five years, and it
may be that he had forgotten that four years before, the law officers
had given it as their opinion that there was no act of parliament giving
the postmaster general authority over the colonial post office and
postages. At Freeling's instance the postmaster general hastened to put
the matter into the hands of Glenelg, the colonial secretary. Having
taken time to consider the situation, the colonial office drew up a
statement of the subject for the attention of the postmaster
general.[251]
Observing that the assembly of Lower Canada, not being satisfied with
the imperial bill of 1834, had drawn up a bill of their own, and that
the legislative council, in declining to approve of this bill, had asked
the intervention of the home government with the British parliament, the
colonial secretary stated that the British government was not prepared
to accede to this proposition.
By the act of 1834, the regulation of the post office in the several
colonies was referred to the local legislatures, and His Majesty's
government, the colonial office concluded, could not call in the
authority of the imperial parliament for the solution of any
difficulties that may arise until it could be shown conclusively that
there were no other means of settling them; and then it would be only
with the concurrence of the legislatures to whom the matter had been
submitted.
But while determined that, in matters involving legislation, the
colonies should be left to work out their own salvation, the colonial
secretary observed that there were certain matters within the competence
of the postmaster general which, if given effect to, would ameliorate
the situation.
The legislative council had among their requests asked (1) that all
information required by the legislature should be furnished; (2) that
the accounts of receipts and expenditures should be laid before the
legislature annually; (3) that the officers of the department should be
placed on moderate fixed salaries, in lieu of all perquisites and fees.
These objects, Glenelg pointed out, would have been to a certain degree
attained by the bill of 1834. But as it had not become law, no time
should be lost in putting these changes into effect, as they did not
require legislative sanction. The colonial secretary also animadverted
on the emoluments of Stayner. These he considered entirely excessive,
and besides they were levied on an objectionable principle. The
postmaster general was requested to put an end forthwith to the receipt
by the deputy postmaster general of any fees on account of the
transmission of newspapers. His salary should not be excessive.
As a guide to the postmaster general in fixing it, the colonial
secretary gave a list of the salaries of the principal officers in the
colony. Omitting that of the governor general, the highest salary in
Canada was that of the receiver general which was L1000 a year. No other
salary exceeded L500 a year. As against these, Stayner's emoluments of
L3185 for each of the three preceding years were out of all proportion.
Glenelg further impressed upon the postmaster general the anxiety of His
Majesty's government that no time should be lost in removing any real
grievances which might be shown to exist. The postmaster general
concurred with Glenelg as to the necessity of removing all reasonable
grounds of complaint, and stated that steps had been, or were about to
be, taken to that end.
To the postmaster general the newspaper postage question was one of real
difficulty, in view of the absence of necessary legislation. As matters
stood, newspapers could only be sent as letters or under the deputy
postmaster general's privilege. If the law officers could see any way
out of the difficulty, the postmaster general would be glad to adopt it.
As the law officers' ingenuity was not equal to the difficulty, the
situation remained essentially unchanged for some years. Meantime
Stayner was enjoying to the full the peace and quiet which followed upon
the altered conditions in the two provincial assemblies. It was some
years since he had heard a complimentary reference to himself in either
house, though no man could have shown more zeal for the improvement of
the service he administered.
But an agreeable change was at hand. On February 17, 1837, the
legislative council of Upper Canada had before it the report of a
committee it had appointed to inquire into the post office. The chairman
of the committee was John Macaulay, formerly postmaster of Kingston, and
Stayner's chief support in Upper Canada. When there was a question of
appointing an assistant deputy postmaster general for Upper Canada, it
was Macaulay that Stayner desired for the position.
The burden of the report of the committee of the council of 1837 was
that the interests of the several provinces could be maintained only by
preserving to the post office its character as an imperial institution.
In Stayner's hands the service would be carried on efficiently, now that
he had been furnished with the assistance he had applied for. Indeed the
magnitude of his labour could be understood only by those connected with
the service.
The committee drew up a series of conditions which they considered
would place the institution on an efficient footing. The conditions were
very similar to those suggested by the legislative council of Lower
Canada in 1836. The bill of the Lower Canadian assembly appeared to the
committee to illustrate the impracticability of any scheme such as that
proposed by the imperial government in 1834.
If the acceptance of a post office bill was left to the provincial
legislatures, they would almost certainly insist upon a scheme of low
rates, based entirely on local considerations. The excessively reduced
scale of rates proposed by the Lower Canadian assembly could not fail to
leave a large deficit. Hence the wisdom of leaving the rates as they
stood until their effects could be seen.
Ten days after the committee of the legislative council made its report,
the house of assembly adopted an address to the king, in which the same
ideas were embodied, and in the following month a joint address was
prepared by the assembly and the legislative council.[252]
The address began with a recital of the facts making up the existing
situation, and then proceeded to an effective criticism of the imperial
scheme of 1834. It pointed out that the colonial secretary had stated
that, in order to conform to the imperial plans, a uniformity of views
should pervade the bills passed by the several provinces; that a careful
consideration of the bill prepared for the acceptance of the provinces,
and of the action taken upon it in the province discloses no reasonable
grounds for the hope that the legislatures would soon (if indeed ever)
arrive at such uniformity as would ensure the establishment of a
practicable system.
Even if such unanimity on the terms of a bill were reached, it would
doubtless happen frequently, the committee conceived, that amendments in
this bill would be necessary, but as all the legislatures would have to
be convinced of the necessity of the amendments which seemed desirable
or even indispensable to any one of them, the difficulties in the way of
making needful alterations to meet the changing conditions in
progressive communities would be insuperable.
These conditions led inevitably to the conclusion on the part of the
committee that the only means of securing a practicable system in which
all interests, provincial and imperial, would be considered, was to
maintain the supremacy of the British post office, and to continue to
entrust to it the supreme power of making laws and regulations for the
management of the post office in the several provinces. The interests of
the provincial legislatures would be amply safeguarded, the committee
was confident, if their demands for information respecting the post
office were acceded to, and if it were understood that complaints
against the deputy postmaster general, preferred by petition to the
legislature and supported by the joint address of the two houses, would
have the attention of the postmaster general in London.
The turn which affairs had taken was naturally gratifying to Stayner,
who urged the postmaster general to give careful heed to the terms of
the joint address, which, if carried into effect, would, in his opinion,
provide a remedy for all warranted dissatisfaction.
The secretary of the post office did not share Stayner's hopefulness. He
observed to the postmaster general that, however desirable uniformity of
system might be in the post offices of British North America, the
success of any act of the imperial parliament would be jeopardized, if
it involved the imposition of a tax upon the colonies. The secretary was
prepared, however, to listen to any suggestion Stayner might have to
make in the way of improving the existing system.
Although Stayner's friends were in control of both legislative chambers
in Upper Canada, his peace of mind on that account was not of long
duration. In April 1837, both houses passed a franking act, under which
the members were authorized to send their letters free, during the
sittings of the legislature. This act, as Stayner pointed out to the
postmaster general, subverted the imperial acts, upon which the
existence of the post office depended, and he was placed in a very
awkward situation.
Stayner, according to his letter to the postmaster general, had either
to violate the instructions from St. Martins-le-Grand or to bring
himself into collision with both the legislature and the executive. This
act appeared to Stayner to be a fresh illustration of the unfitness of
local legislatures to deal with an institution like the post office. If
part of the revenues could be withheld, as would be the case where
members did not pay their postage, any of the legislatures might, by
passing an act for the purpose, oblige him to pay into the local
treasury the whole of the revenue which came into his hands, or it might
in any other way supersede the laws of the British parliament.
The bill had received the assent of the governor. Constitutionally it
had thereby become an act. But on Stayner's remonstrance the governor
admitted to the colonial office that he should not have given his
sanction to it. The act was disallowed by the home government.
The question of franking the correspondence of the provincial
governments and of the members of the legislatures was one upon which
the legislatures in the several provinces had particularly strong
convictions. For a considerable period before 1837, the legislatures of
Upper and Lower Canada had not paid their accounts for postage.
The account against Upper Canada, which amounted to L1629, was paid in
the beginning of 1837; while the account against Lower Canada was not
paid until after the dissolution of the last assembly at the time of the
rebellion. It amounted to L4043.
The governor general, Gosford, in reporting the payment of the account
of Lower Canada, suggested to the colonial secretary that the sum might
be remitted as an act of grace on the part of the imperial government,
and he urged that if the home government should not feel warranted in
making this concession in its entirety, the correspondence of the
governor general and his civil secretary, which embraced all the
executive business of the province, might be exempt from postage
charges.
Gosford's suggestions were in harmony with the whole character of his
administration. Indeed his persistence in his policy of conciliation
brought down upon him the distrust of the ultra-Loyalists.
Stayner, to whom Gosford's suggestion was referred, opposed it
vigorously. If, he argued, this concession were made to Lower Canada,
immediate demands of the same character would be made by the other
provinces. This would be followed by requests for the free transmission
of members' correspondence, and the post office would speedily find
itself in a deficit.
It would be specially inadvisable to grant this privilege to Lower
Canada, Stayner averred, as the postage received from that province,
after deducting the British packet postage, which was the admitted due
of the British post office, barely sufficed to pay the expenses of the
service in the province. The revenues from Upper Canada exceeded the
expenses by a considerable sum, and any extension of the advantages now
enjoyed by Lower Canada, would be at the expense of the upper province.
The first of the annual statements of revenue and expenditure for which
the legislatures had been contending for many years was presented to
the legislatures on the 17th of January, 1838. The statement contained
an undivided account of the operations in Upper and Lower Canada. This
was not quite satisfactory to the house in Upper Canada, but as the
services for the conveyance of the mails ran from one province into the
other, it was impossible to assign accurately to each province its share
of the expense for their maintenance.
As the statement showed a surplus of L11,264 for the years 1836-1837,
the legislature of Upper Canada saw no reason for hesitating to press
its demand that the franking privilege be granted to its members. They
went, indeed, much further, and asked that the whole amount of the
surplus revenue, which arose from the post office business in Upper
Canada, be transferred to them.
In support of their request, the legislature pointed out that, in the
imperial act of 1834, it was provided that as soon as the consent of His
Majesty should be signified to the bills of the several colonial
legislatures, the net revenue from the post office in British North
America should be distributed among the several provinces in the
proportion indicated by their gross revenues; that the suspension of the
legislature in Lower Canada, in consequence of the rebellion, made it
impossible to procure joint legislative enactments; and the financial
condition of Upper Canada made it necessary that the province should
have at its disposal all the means to which it was legally entitled.
The terms of this memorial were entirely in accord with Stayner's views
as to the proper settlement of this long standing difficulty, and he
urged the postmaster general to do what was possible to give effect to
the petition. He pointed out that, with Mackenzie and Papineau out of
the country, and fugitives from justice, there was no further
disposition on the part of the legislatures to wrest from the imperial
post office the control of the postal systems in the provinces, and that
the appropriation of the surplus revenues to provincial purposes removed
the only valid argument against existing arrangements.
The postmaster general, however, was not to be moved from the position
he had taken. He replied to the address stating that no disposition
could be made of the surplus post office revenues, until the several
colonial governments had come to an agreement on the subject.
FOOTNOTES:
[244] Seventh report of the committee on grievances (_Journals of
Assembly_, 1835, App. 21).
[245] Second report of a committee of the house of assembly of Lower
Canada, 1835-1836.
[246] This gentleman was afterwards the editor of the monumental
_Documentary History of New York_.
[247] 4, Geo. III. C. 24.
[248] Glenelg to Head, December 5, 1835.
[249] _Journals of Assembly_, Upper Canada, 1836, p. 320, and Appendix,
No. 52, to these _Journals_.
[250] Freeling to postmaster general, March 28, 1836 (_Can. Arch._, Br.
P.O. Transcripts, VII.).
[251] June 6, 1836 (_Can. Arch._, Br. P.O. Transcripts, VI.).
[252] _Journals of Assembly_, 1837, p. 580.