ch sets in your vicinity as the circumstances may
permit. To enable you to make change in connection with the sale of
the enclosed sets I include a sufficient quantity of ordinary 1/2c
postage stamps.

I may add that the accompanying supply has been based strictly upon
the annual revenue of your office, and, having regard to the total
number of sets available and the extent of their distribution,
represents that proportion to which you are entitled.

I am, Sir, Your Obedient Servant,
E. P. STANTON, _Superintendent._

So anxious did the department show itself in its efforts to
circumnavigate the speculator, and so obvious was the fact that the
Jubilee stamps were issued, like our own Columbian stamps, for the
pecuniary profit the Government would derive from their sale, that it is
small wonder that the series was condemned and discredited by the
philatelic press almost universally. The following extract from the
_Monthly Journal_ for June, 1897, is typical of many:--

We are indebted to various correspondents for papers and cuttings
with reference to the Jubilee issue of this Colony which will have
taken place by the time this is in print. While acknowledging that
the design of the stamps appears to be a very handsome and
appropriate one, we feel bound to add that the affair possesses no
other redeeming feature whatever. The Canadian Government has made
a new contract for the supply of stamps, etc., with an American
firm, which will apparently involve a new issue of stamps within a
short time. If the occasion had been taken for the issue of a
permanent series appropriate to the Jubilee year, nothing could
have been more agreeable to philatelists throughout the British
Empire; but to bring out a set of labels, including unnecessarily
high values and printed in limited numbers, to be issued
concurrently with the present stamps, is to reproduce all the most
objectionable features of the unnecessary and speculative
emissions, which we all desire to put an end to. We cannot expect
that on such an occasion as this loyal British subjects will be
able to abstain altogether from purchasing Jubilee mementoes of
this description, but we would most strongly recommend them to be
satisfied with copies of one or two of the lower values. Outside
the British Empire we trust that this di