Note 109 — I THE RATE FOR LETTERS

"There is no doubt that the revenues of the provinces showed a nominal surplus, but it is not so clear that this surplus, which amounted to £884 in 1801, and to £2,514 in 1811, was a surplus on the provincial services. Many years later, when the administration of the Post Office in the colonies and the question of the disposal of the surplus revenue had become part of a political matter of the first magnitude, the provincial Legislatures alleged that the surplus amounted to a very considerable sum each year, and that the circumstances constituted a taxation of the colonies by the Mother Country; but the Deputy Postmaster-General asserted that this surplus was in fact composed of revenues to which the colonies had no claim, viz. the charges for British packet postage, that is, for transmission of letters across the ocean, and payments in respect of military postage, and that in point of fact the local service had never yielded a surplus—that, indeed, there was probably a deficit.

"This I feel myself bound to state as my firm conviction, that neither for the last ten years, nor for any previous period, has the postage of Lower Canada afforded one farthing of Net Revenue."—Mr. T. A. Stayner, Deputy Postmaster-General (Report of Special Committee of the House of Assembly on the Post Office Department in the Province of Lower Canada, 11th February 1832, p. 12).