acceptable to the other colonies. The committee also held it to be highly desirable that the several provinces should concur in the recognition of certain common principles, and in the establishment of an independent authority placed in one of the colonies for the purpose of the organization and centralization of the department within certain prescribed limits.

The legislature concurred generally in the recommendations of the committee, but on the question of postage rates they took a stand of their own. The recommendation in favour of a scale of rates graduated according to the distance the letters were carried was voted down, and in its place the legislature adopted a single uniform rate of threepence for all places within the province. If the financial results were at first unfavourable, the legislature would cheerfully make up any deficit for a few years. The legislature asked the lieutenant-governor to correspond with the other provinces, and to convey to them the earnest desire of the assembly that they would be pleased to consider these resolutions. This was in the spring of 1847. On August 27 of the same year Lord Elgin wrote to the lieutenant-governors of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, inviting one or two members of the executive council of each of these provinces to meet at Montreal for the purpose of maturing a plan regarding the Post Office establishment which might be submitted to the several legislatures at their next session.

Representatives of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick met in Montreal in the autumn, and on November 19 they agreed on a report to be submitted to their respective governments. The first point to which they addressed themselves was whether there should be one system comprehending the postal service in all the provinces, or whether each province should have its own system, which would be entirely independent of the others, except so far as would be necessary to secure imperial and intercolonial interests. After weighing all that could be said for each plan, they thought the balance of advantage lay with the latter proposition. In order to protect those interests which overpassed the limits of any one province, they agreed that there

should be an office of central audit in Canada, of which the postmaster-general of that province should be the head. Besides looking after the imperial and interprovincial postal finances, the postmaster-general of Canada should, in concert with the chief officer of the Post Office department in each province, enter into contracts and make all the necessary arrangements for the transmission of the mails along the chief or central route from Canada to Halifax, and between Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. On the question of postage rates, the representatives favoured the rate of threepence per half ounce, but fearing that some of the provinces might be unwilling to disregard the consideration of distance altogether, they agreed that, if any legislature would prefer to make a greater charge for longer distances, the threepenny rate should carry letters for any distance up to three hundred miles, and that the rate for any distance beyond three hundred miles should be sixpence per half ounce.

When this report was laid before the postmaster-general of Great Britain, he approved generally of the recommendations, and the Treasury informed the Colonial Office that, subject to some modifications of a minor nature, the several provincial authorities might be authorized to carry into effect the recommendations of the commissioners. When the arrangements were sufficiently matured for the purpose, the requisite steps would be taken for the transfer of the management of the postal communications to the provincial authorities.

In June of the following year the executive council of Nova Scotia took up the question again, and decided to recommend for the consideration of the other provinces that a single uniform rate of threepence per half ounce should carry letters not only within each of the provinces, but from any post office in one province to any post office in any other province. The proposal of a central office of audit was also dropped, and each provincial administration was to be quite independent of any of the others. The Nova Scotia legislature sent a representative to Canada with the amended propositions, which met with instant acceptance. New Brunswick agreed to the scheme with equal readiness. The

British Post Office was glad to be rid of a difficult subject on such satisfactory terms, and in 1849 an act was passed transferring the control of the Post Office in the North American colonies to the legislatures of the several provinces.

TH

IV

PROVINCIAL CONTROL

A PERIOD OF PROGRESS

HE transfer took place in 1851, and until Confederation each provincial legislature had full jurisdiction over the postal services within its province. The administrative officers in Canada and New Brunswick were members of the provincial ministry, in the former case from 1851, in the latter from 1855. For the first four years in New Brunswick, and during the whole period in Nova Scotia, the postmaster-general was a permanent official of the government, working in direct subordination to the provincial secretary.

When the provincial governments took their respective postal systems into their own hands, they proceeded at once to develop and expand them, so as to place the means of communication at the service of their people, however remote might be their settlements. So far as the Maritime Provinces were concerned, the history of the sixteen years from 1851 to 1867 is practically no more than a record of the uninterrupted development of this policy. The number of post offices in Nova Scotia in 1851 was 143; at Confederation the number had risen to 630. An accurate idea of the increase in the accommodation can be conveyed by the mileage of the annual travel of the mail couriers, which is a compound of the length of the routes and the frequency of the couriers' trips over them. In 1851 the annual travel of the mail couriers was 352,000 miles; in 1867 this mileage had increased rather more than threefold. The mails were carried, at the end of this period, daily between Halifax and Pictou, and between Halifax and St John. On the two other great trunk lines

in the province, from Halifax along the Annapolis Valley to Digby, and from Pictou eastward to the Strait of Canso, the couriers' trips had been increased to three times weekly in the former case, and to twice weekly in the latter.

In New Brunswick the postal system was equally comprehensive of all the settlements, remote as well as near. In 1851 there were 101 post offices distributed throughout the province. In 1867 the number had increased to 438. The annual mileage of couriers' travel did not increase to the same extent, but this was due to the fact that by 1851 mails were carried over all the great routes with a frequency that would scarcely be considered inadequate to-day. The principal need of the settlements was for more post offices on or near the established routes, and, as we have seen, this requirement was satisfactorily met. In neither province had the Post Office much assistance from railways before Confederation. In Nova Scotia the only lines on which the mails were carried by railway were those between Halifax and Truro, and between Halifax and Windsor. New Brunswick had but one line, that running from St John to Moncton, and thence on to Shediac on the Straits of Northumberland.

The people in both provinces evinced by their patronage a hearty appreciation of the benefits of the increased accommodation placed at their service. The reduction in the postal rates, consequent on the replacement of the obsolete system based on weight and the number of enclosures, by the simple rate of threepence per half ounce, was very great. It was estimated that the average postage on a letter under the former system was ninepence. So great, however, was the extension in the use of the post office by the public after 1850, that in Nova Scotia the effect of the drop in the rates was overcome four years later, the revenue of 1854 surpassing that of 1850. The increase in the revenue was large and steady during the whole period from 1851 to 1867. In the year ended 1850 it was $28,000. In 1866 it had risen to $69,000. The evidences of appreciation of the lowered rates and enhanced accommodation on the part of the public in New Brunswick were equally marked. In 1850, the last year under the old system, the postal receipts were $26,600.

Three years later the results of the great diminution in the charges were practically overcome, and in 1854 the receipts surpassed those of 1850 by $4000. As in Nova Scotia, the postal receipts in New Brunswick rose steadily until they reached over $50,000 in 1866. A feature common to the operations in both provinces was the regular recurrence of a large deficit each year. But, as the provincial governments made it part of their policy to carry newspapers free, the deficits were not to be wondered at. Indeed, the postmastergeneral of New Brunswick, insisting on the educational benefits of the policy as regards newspapers, declared that the amount the legislature was called upon to pay annually to make up the deficit in Post Office operation should be put in the same class with the grants for the common schools, and the legislature did not dissent from this view.

In Canada there was the same rapid and steady expansion as we have seen in the Maritime Provinces, and owing to the larger number of commercial communities to be served, the financial results were much better. When the legislature acquired the control of the postal system, there were 601 post offices in Upper and Lower Canada. By 1855, four years later, this number was more than doubled. In 1862 the figures of 1851 were more than trebled, and when the province entered Confederation in 1867, it had 2333 post offices. Canada had an advantage in the fact that its main lines of travel were covered by railways at a comparatively early date. During the year 1853 the Great Western Railway was being carried from Niagara Falls to Windsor, and as it advanced, the line was laid under contribution by the Post Office. By January 25, 1854, the railway was completed, and the time for the conveyance between the Niagara and the Detroit Rivers was reduced from four days to from eight to ten hours. Subsidiary railway lines were at the same time extending the advantages of rapid conveyance to other sections of Western Ontario. The completion of the Grand Trunk Railway to Toronto, in October 1856, brought Quebec and Montreal into close communication with the towns which were opening up between Toronto and the western limits of the province.