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.
Subject to the approval of the postmaster general, the deputies opened
all post offices, appointed all postmasters and other officers of the
department, and made all contracts for the conveyance of the mails.
Until Stayner's time, the department at home exercised a watchful
oversight in one particular. It insisted that the deputy postmaster
general should not extend the system, or increase the accommodation
within it, unless he could satisfy St. Martins-le-Grand that the
additional outlay required should be met by a corresponding increase in
the revenue. Assured on this point, the department gave the deputies a
practically free hand.
Insistence on the point of finances brought the general post office into
sharp collision with the colonial legislatures for a number of years.
But shortly after Stayner's assumption of office, the department in
London loosened the reins, and directed him to study the wants of the
rising communities, and extend postal accommodation to whatever
districts seemed to him to require it.
The confidence bestowed by the postmaster general on his young deputy in
the Canadas was not misplaced. Stayner was a man of energy and
authority, who had grown up in the service under the administration of
his father-in-law, who was his predecessor in office, and his loyalty to
the interests of both the postmaster general and the community he served
stood unquestioned. With his appointment to his high office, he fell
heir to a dispute which had been waged for a number of years between the
general post office and the legislatures of Upper and Lower Canada,
involving the legal right of the post office to do business in the
colonies under existing conditions.
Stayner was fortunate in finding in each province differences between
the administration and the houses of assembly, which gave little promise
of settlement, and he promptly attached himself to the side of the
administration. This, indeed, was the only course open to him, in view
of his accountability to a department, which, in according him a certain
freedom of action, took jealous heed that he should not abuse it.
But Stayner had important interests of his own, which called for
protection by the government. His extra-official emoluments--from the
postage on newspapers, and from his agency for the collection of United
States postage, due in Canada--now far exceeding his official salary,
began to excite public attention, and he required all the support he
could gather to himself, to enable him to brave it out with the
assemblies, when they insisted on his showing by what right he took
these emoluments.
His position, however repugnant to popular notions, was officially
unassailable, and as he managed to identify his interests with those of
the administrations, the governors of the two provinces remained
steadily his friends and protectors. He had even the gratification of
being commended for his great services by the assembly of Upper Canada
in 1837.
But a change was coming for Stayner, and indeed had come. Ever since the
amount and the sources of his income became known to the home
government, there had been disapprobation. The secretary of the post
office, a large part of whose income had been derived from similar
extra-official sources, deprecated the criticism which began to spring
up, and the postmaster general weakly and reluctantly agreed that
Stayner's exceptional services entitled him to exceptional emoluments.
The colonial secretary, Lord Glenelg, however, was of another mind. The
two provinces were seething with dissatisfaction, and it was not clear
to him in what the grievances of the colonials consisted. A committee of
the house of commons had sat in 1828, heard evidence, and reported, and
the leaders of the assembly in Lower Canada had declared that if the
recommendations of the committee were carried into effect, the province
would be content.
Guiding his policy by that report, and seeking every opportunity to make
good its findings, the colonial secretary observed that the political
dissatisfaction and unrest, so far from disappearing, was spreading year
by year. His bewilderment sharpened his eyes, and as they rested on
Stayner's case, he saw a condition which offended his sense of justice,
and he at once demanded of the postmaster general that he should remove
this obvious wrong.
For a time Stayner's tactics, or his luck, held him scatheless. The
postmaster general and the colonial secretary had agreed that the remedy
for all the ills that afflicted the post office was to be provided by
the bill adopted by the imperial parliament in 1834. This bill, however,
could not become operative until the acceptance by the several colonial
legislatures of a common measure for the regulation of the post office
in the several provinces by the postmaster general of England. As all
the colonies had rejected this measure, the situation remained
unchanged.
Stayner continued to take his exorbitant emoluments, and the government
was helpless. The postmaster general asked the colonial secretary to
furnish him with an expedient for settling the matter, but the colonial
secretary could think of nothing, to which overriding legal or political
objections could not be made. While, however, Stayner enjoyed immunity
from attacks by the government, he was a marked man, and when Poulett
Thomson came to Canada, he lost no time in making Stayner realize that
the period of his exceptional fortunes was at an end.
Poulett Thomson's special mission to Canada was to lay the foundations
of responsible government in the country, and he began by taking things
into his own hands. In dealing with the post office he sent for Stayner,
and, instead of treating him as an officer of independent authority,
Thomson informed Stayner that it was his intention to reform the post
office in its construction and duties.
All the governor general required of Stayner was that the latter should
furnish him with any information he considered necessary. Although
Thomson had never had any actual experience in the workings of a post
office he had opportunities of acquiring a sound theoretical knowledge
on the subject. He was a member of the committee of the house of commons
which was appointed in 1837 to examine the proposition of Rowland Hill
for penny postage.
As Hill's scheme involved an entire change in post office methods, the
_modus operandi_ at that time pursued was thoroughly set out to the
committee, its weaknesses exposed, and the merits of the new proposition
fully discussed. No observant man could attend the work of that
committee without gaining definite views as to the principles upon which
a post office should be conducted.
In June 1840, Stayner reported to the secretary of the general post
office a state of affairs that indicated that Thomson had taken the
direction of post office affairs into his own hands. He had ordered
Stayner to enter into negotiations for the conveyance of mails by
steamer between Quebec and Montreal, and upon lake Ontario, and when the
negotiations failed, he expressed a determination to obtain authority to
build vessels for post office purposes. He also directed Stayner to draw
up a bill for the administration of the post office in British North
America upon principles to be determined by the governor.
The colonial secretary, in July, instructed the governor to appoint a
commission to investigate and report upon the post office in the
colonies in all its bearings. The committee as appointed consisted of
Dowling, legal adviser to the governor, Davidson, senior commissioner of
crown lands, and Stayner.
In point of ability the committee was a competent one. Its members all
had that sort of experience in public affairs, which would enable them
to apprize fairly the mass of information laid before them--evidence
which would satisfy the public as to the justice of their conclusions.
But having in mind the aims of the committee, its composition was not
such as to give hope for harmonious co-operation among its members. The
colonial secretary in instructing the governor general to appoint the
committee, directed that it should investigate and report on the state
of the British North American post office, including its administration.
The work of the committee was necessarily a scrutiny into the methods of
the administration of Stayner, and involved an attitude of defence on
his part. And the other members of the committee did not fail to make
him feel the difficulty of his dual position. Although he signed the
report as a commissioner, he appended a note to it stating that he did
so, merely because he conceived it to be his duty as a commissioner.
But he also intimated that he was far from agreeing with all the
conclusions of his associates; and a few months later he presented a
statement to the governor general, pointing out the respects in which he
differed from the other commissioners, and defending himself against
charges which were set forth in the report.
The committee entered upon their work by calling upon the deputy
postmasters general of Canada and the Maritime provinces for a body of
statistics and other matter, which, when furnished, provided them with a
survey of the whole colonial system, and its methods of operation.
Detailed information was given in tabular form of every post office in
the colonies--the name and date of appointment of its postmaster, the
revenue of the office, and the several items that composed the
postmaster's income; and of every mail route, with its cost of
maintenance. All regulations for the guidance of postmasters in the
management of their offices were submitted to the commission.
The commissioners addressed circular letters to all the postmasters, and
to prominent people in every section of the colonies, inviting them to
give their views on the post offices in their locality, and asking
particularly as to the extent letters were carried by agencies other
than the post office, and their opinions as to why these other agencies
were employed in preference to the post office.
The information obtained was most voluminous, and the report of the
commission based upon it was comprehensive.[264] It began with a
historical sketch of the post office in the colonies, from its origin
down to the time of the commission; passed on to a survey of the
institution as it then stood; pointed out the defects they discovered in
its arrangements; and concluded by a number of recommendations for the
removal of the defects, and the improvement of the system.
The defects which most impressed the commissioners were the want of
uniformity within the system, and the uncontrolled power of the
representatives of the postmaster general in the colonies. As
illustrating the lack of uniformity, they pointed out that though the
colonies were in postal theory an undivided whole, they were under the
control of two deputies of the postmaster general, who were entirely
independent of one another, and that no effort seemed to have been made
to co-ordinate the practice in the two jurisdictions.
The absence of organization was more noticeable in the Maritime
provinces, a condition which the commissioners attributed to the failure
of the deputy at Halifax to establish general regulations, and to the
want of travelling surveyors or inspectors, who might have introduced
uniformity of practice among the postmasters.
A striking instance of unauthorized variation from usual post office
practice was the existence of way offices. These were, to all intents
and purposes, post offices, and yet they had no official recognition as
such.
These way offices were set up at any convenient place along the line of
the post roads. They were put in operation, sometimes by local
magistrates, or other people of importance in the districts; sometimes
by neighbouring postmasters, and sometimes by the deputy postmaster
general. They had no accounting relations with the head of the
department, but carried on their work under the control of an adjacent
postmaster who was held responsible for the postage collected by them.
In spite of their anomalous character, these way offices had a
usefulness of their own; for they were not abolished until after the
Nova Scotia post office was absorbed in the post office department of
the dominion in 1867.
The commission in support of their second conclusion, that the power of
the deputies of the postmaster general were subject to no practical
control, and that the abuses usually associated with irresponsibility
were not absent from the administration of the colonial post office,
submitted two cases which had come under their notice, and which seemed
to show that in these cases at least Stayner was chargeable with
maladministration and nepotism.
Stayner in his rejoinder defended himself with vigour and success
against the imputations of his colleagues, and retorted upon Dowling,
the chairman, with charges of unfairness and studied discourtesy towards
himself. The bearing of Dowling was so offensive that Stayner was with
difficulty restrained from severing his relations with the commission.
The remedies proposed by the commission for the two cardinal defects to
which they had drawn attention, were simple and efficacious. They would
place the whole colonial postal system in the hands of a single deputy
postmaster general, who should own responsibility, not only to his
official superior in England, but also, in all points which did not
conflict with his primary duty, to the executive heads of the several
provinces, so far as related to the parts of the system within their
respective jurisdictions.
The headquarters of the deputy postmaster general, the commission urged,
should be at the capital of the province of Canada, and he should be
under the orders of the governor general. The authority of the deputy
postmaster general in the other provinces should be vested in local
inspectors, whose relations with the lieutenant governors were to be
identical with those which should subsist between the deputy postmaster
general and the governor general.
In cases occurring in the other provinces, which appeared to transcend
the powers of the local inspectors, the lieutenant governors might
correspond with the governor general, and the inspectors with the
deputy. Stayner objected to the plan proposed, in so far as it took the
appointments to postmasterships and other offices out of the hands of
the representative of the postmaster general, and made them the subject
of political patronage.
Having disposed of the questions relating to the organization and
administration of the department, the commissioners proceeded to discuss
matters bearing upon its operations.
The first of these was the rates of postage. In dealing with this
subject the commission had before them a mass of evidence from all parts
of the colonies, which convinced them that the great bulk of the letters
exchanged, did not pass through the post office. It was asserted by
responsible persons that, in some parts of the country, scarcely ten per
cent. of the letters written were conveyed by the post office, and in
few cases was the estimate of letters carried by private means less than
fifty per cent.
Though various other reasons were given for this systematic evasion of
the only lawful means of conveying letters--the infrequency of the
couriers' services, and the public distrust in the security of the
mails--there was practical unanimity in the declaration that the chief
obstacle in the way of the public's using the post office was the
excessive rates of postage.
The commission found that there was a strong sentiment among their
correspondents, favouring the adoption of the system then recently
introduced into England by the genius of Rowland Hill. Until 1840, the
postal rates in England were substantially the same as those which
hampered the post office in the colonies; and the general avoidance of
the post office by the merchants and other writers of letters in that
country was as marked as it was in Canada.
Richard Cobden declared that not one-sixth of the letters exchanged in
England were transmitted through the post office, and other observers of
equal authority bore similar emphatic testimony. The displacement of the
complicated system of charges based on the number of enclosures and the
distance the letters were carried, and the adoption of a penny rate
carrying letters to all parts of the United Kingdom, immediately turned
all the streams of correspondence into the channels of the post office.
Not only were the private letter-carrying agencies put out of business,
but the low, easily comprehended rate called into existence a vast body
of new correspondence.
Few people in Canada believed in the possibility of a rate as low as a
penny for the Canadian post office, but many were attracted by the
fascination of a uniform charge even though it should be higher than
that, which was so vastly augmenting correspondence in England.
To all such, whether the uniform rate they advocated were a penny or
higher, the commission addressed themselves, pointing out that the
geographical, social and industrial differences between England and the
colonies, made it impracticable to base an argument for the one upon the
experience of the other.
Uniform penny postage was an immediate success in the United Kingdom
because in the United Kingdom there were three thickly-populated
countries, with highly developed social and industrial systems. Hill
discovered, by a study of the postal statistics laid before the house of
commons, that in consequence of the great volume of correspondence
exchanged, the comparatively short distances letters were as a rule
carried, and the highly developed system of transportation, the average
cost of carrying a letter in the United Kingdom did not exceed one
farthing. A sum equally small covered the expenses of administration and
the maintenance of post offices.
A further discovery of equal importance, which surprised Hill as much as
it did anybody, was that the difference in expense between carrying a
letter the shortest and the longest possible distances in the kingdom
was so small that it could not be expressed in the least valuable coin
in use.
In these facts lay the whole case for uniform penny postage. At a penny
a letter, there was a clear profit to the post office, and the
augmentation in the number of letters as a result of this inducement to
correspondence made almost any imaginable profits possible; and the
insignificant difference in cost between carrying letters long and short
distances, led inevitably to the ideal uniform rate.
The conditions in the British North American colonies were in all
respects the reverse of those existing in England. The vast extent of
their territories, the sparseness of their populations, and their
undeveloped state, socially and industrially, all combined to make the
postal system very costly, and the returns meagre; and the great, almost
unsettled, stretches between the centres of population made the
difference in the cost of conveyance between long and short distances
very considerable.
The commission, with such statistics as were available before them,
estimated that the average expense of delivering a letter was threepence
for conveyance, and twopence-halfpenny for overhead and maintenance
charges. These figures showed the impracticability of either low or
uniform postage rates, unless the legislatures were willing to take on
themselves the yearly deficits, which were certain to occur.
The commission, however, were prepared to recommend considerable
reductions in the charges, even though these should result in a
noticeable shrinkage in the revenue. Indeed, it seemed to them a
distinct advantage that the revenue should be brought down to a point,
at which it would no more than meet the expenses. They took it as
settled that the British government would adhere to the principle of the
imperial bill of 1834, under which the surplus revenues were to be
divided among the colonies; and they foresaw serious difficulties among
the provinces in dealing with the problem of distributing the surplus.
The rates they recommended--ranging from twopence a letter when the
conveyance did not exceed thirty miles up to one shilling for a distance
over three hundred miles--were much lower than those charged at that
time by the post office.
Dealing with the question of newspaper postage, the commission condemned
the impropriety of allowing the sums accruing under this head to pass
into the pockets of the deputies of the postmaster general, and
recommended that newspapers should be charged at the rate of
one-halfpenny each, and that the proceeds should go with the other
postage into the treasury.
A point, interesting as illustrating one of the differences of view
between ourselves and our grandfathers, was that the commissioners
strongly recommended that the prepayment of postage on newspapers should
not continue to be compulsory, but that it should be optional whether
the sum should be paid by the sender or recipient of the newspaper.
It had never been held that the sender of a letter should pay the
postage; and to the public it appeared a hardship that there should be a
different practice as regards newspapers. Indeed the committee saw very
good reasons from the standpoint of the post office why the payment of
postage on newspapers should be deferred. If postmasters could add to
their revenues, and consequently to their salaries, by collecting the
postage when delivering newspapers, they would have a strong motive for
seeing that the papers were delivered.
The commission closed their report by noting a number of the details of
post office practice: the demand for more post offices throughout the
provinces, which they endorsed; complaints of the inconvenience of sites
of post offices; the hours post offices should be open to the public,
and the time for closing the mails; special handling of money letters,
and the enforcement of the terms of mail contracts, and the salaries of
postmasters. On all these matters they commented at length, and made a
number of helpful suggestions.
The report was presented to the governor general on December 31, 1841.
While it was in course of preparation--on November 29, 1841--the post
office building in Quebec was destroyed by fire.
For Stayner this was a serious misfortune. Not only was he compelled to
withdraw his attention from the affairs of the commission, in order to
make provision for carrying on the departmental work, but he was
crippled in drawing up his rejoinder by the fact that all his papers
were consumed with the building, and material upon which he had depended
for explanation and justification of transactions called in question was
no longer available. His statement was not laid before the governor
general until the April following.
In it, besides confuting the conclusions of the other commissioners on
the matters affecting his administration of the post office, Stayner
discussed a number of questions, in which he differed in opinion from
his colleagues. He expressed a qualified approval of the scale of
postage rates recommended in the report, and agreed entirely with them
in their proposals respecting the postage on newspapers.
But Stayner was convinced that his colleagues took entirely too
favourable a view as to the effect of the postage reductions on the
revenue of the department, and he strongly recommended that, before the
proposed changes should be approved, the whole scheme should be
submitted to the provincial legislatures, with its probable financial
consequences, in order that an assurance might be obtained from them
that the deficits which he foresaw should be made good by the provinces.
The first of the measures taken by the government on the report of the
commissioners was to deprive Stayner of a portion of his power. The
proposal to place him under the direction of the governor general was
not entertained in its entirety. But in August 1842, the appointment of
his postmasters was taken out of his hands, and transferred to the
governor general.[265]
Stayner protested that it would be out of his power satisfactorily to
discharge his responsibility as resident head of the post office if he
were deprived of the selection of his officials. The postmaster general
may have agreed with Stayner, but the decision of the matter was not
allowed to rest with him. Consequently, he had no choice, but to inform
Stayner that the question was closed, and that he would have to conform
to the new conditions.
So much freedom of action, however, was still left with Stayner that he
was not expected to retain the services of any official who failed to
satisfy his requirements. But he could no longer dismiss peremptorily.
The official under condemnation was to be afforded an opportunity for
defence before his case was finally disposed of. Thereafter, and until
the post office was transferred to the control of the Canadian
government, whenever a vacancy occurred among the postmasters, the
nomination was made by the governor, and the official appointment of the
person selected, was made by the postmaster general.
In August 1843, Lord Stanley, the colonial secretary, notified the
governor that on assuming office, he found awaiting him the report of
the commission, but owing to the complexity of the matters involved, and
to the fact that further representations on the same subject had been
received from the colonies, the government was unable to arrive at a
conclusion until that time.[266]
The decisions arrived at by the government and imparted to the governor
were of far-reaching importance. The practice which had prevailed ever
since the post office was established, of fixing the postage on letters,
according to the number of enclosures they contained was to be
abolished, and the weight system to be introduced to replace it. A
single letter thereafter was to be one which weighed less than half an
ounce, and the postage determined by the number of half ounces it
weighed. The rates themselves were not changed, nor was the principle of
regarding the distance a letter was carried any factor in the postage,
in any way affected.
But though the effect of the substitution of the weight system for that
based on enclosures was not great, so far as concerned the amount of
postage required on a letter, much was gained in the direction of
simplicity and propriety, when there was no longer the constant appeal
to the postmaster's curiosity, and, at times, cupidity, which was made
by the regulation requiring him to hold up every letter between him and
a lighted candle, in order to satisfy himself as to the number of its
contents.
Another reform, no less welcome to the public, was the abolition of the
privilege conceded to the deputy postmaster general of putting into his
own pocket the proceeds of the postage on newspapers. The recommendation
of the commission that newspapers should be charged one-halfpenny each,
the proceeds to form part of the post office revenue, was adopted by the
government.
These changes went into operation on the 5th of January, 1844. By way of
compensation to the deputy postmaster general for the loss of his
newspaper and other perquisites, he was given the not unhandsome salary
of L2500 sterling a year. This was an amount much beyond what the
treasury considered should be paid as salary for this office, in the
absence of the special circumstances of Stayner's case, and the salary
of his successor was fixed at L1500 a year.[267]
The merchants and other large users of the post office, while perhaps
not unmindful of what had been gained, still had little cause for
satisfaction with the results of the labours of the commission.
Substantial reductions in the postage were still unattained. The
movement in the colonies was greatly stimulated by the course of events
in England as regards penny postage.
Post office officials had, from various motives, decried the great
reform, and ministers of the crown, with their eyes on the diminished
revenue, doubted whether the public benefits had been commensurate with
the cost. Opposition to the continuance of the experiment had reached a
point when it became a question whether modifications in the direction
of higher charges should not be made.
In 1844 the government appointed a committee of the house of commons to
inquire as to the measure of public benefit that could fairly be
attributed to penny postage. The committee made no report, but they
submitted a mass of evidence taken from every quarter of the kingdom,
and from every walk in life, that effectually silenced objectors, and
aroused a desire in all civilized countries for the enjoyment of a
similar boon, to the extent that their circumstances would permit. The
United States, in 1846, after a period of agitation, reduced its charges
to five cents a letter, where the conveyance did not exceed a distance
of three thousand miles, doubling the charge for greater distances.
The British North American colonies shared to the full in the general
desire for the abatement of the impediments to the freer circulation of
correspondence. The Canadian legislature, in 1845, was called upon to
deal with a number of memorials on this subject, and asked Stayner for
his advice.
Stayner was prepared to welcome any reductions that the legislature
might be able to obtain, but he warned them that whatever might be the
ultimate effect of lowered postage rates on the augmentation of
correspondence, there would be an intermediate period, in which the
shrinkage of revenue would be considerable, and it was for the
legislature to determine whether the general financial condition of the
province would warrant their incurring even a temporary deficit in the
post office.
The legislature having in view the fact that the surplus revenue of the
post office was only L8000 at the time, decided that it would be unwise
to embark on any undertaking that threatened them with additional
financial burdens.[268] But the public in Canada were of a different
opinion. The boards of trade of Montreal, Toronto and Quebec petitioned
the postmaster general for a rate of twopence-halfpenny a letter, and,
in 1846, the legislature casting caution aside presented a strong
address to the queen. In it they pointed out the hardship endured by
British subjects in one portion of the empire, in being compelled to pay
extravagant charges for that which is enjoyed by others at merely
nominal cost; and begged to be put on an equal footing in this regard
with the citizens of the United States.
The legislatures of the Maritime provinces were pressing on the home
government demands of a similar character with equal vigour, and as the
policy adopted by the home government was the result of the combined
pressure, and affected all the colonies identically, it is desirable,
before dealing with that policy, to bring the narrative of events in the
Maritime provinces forward to this point.
FOOTNOTES:
[264] This report, with the data obtained by the commissioners, is
printed as Appendix F to the _Sessional Papers of Canada for_ 1846.
[265] Circular Letter of Instructions, August 1842 (_Journals of
Assembly_, N.B., 1843, p. 36).
[266] _Journals of Assembly_, Canada, 1843, p. 51.
[267] Maberly to Stayner, July 27, 1844 (Br. P.O. Transcripts).
[268] _Journals of Assembly_, Canada, 1844-1845, App. P.P.P.