facilities for inter-provincial communication, adding that in
consideration of the introduction of these changes the Legislature would
guarantee to provide such sums as might from time to time be necessary
to defray the expenses of the department. The reply of the Colonial
Office was that the prayer of the petition could not be granted, since
other provinces were involved; but that, so long as the province
guaranteed the charges, the proposal as regards newspapers, taken by
itself, was unobjectionable.

The Home authorities, seeing that in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick the
service still showed a deficit year by year, remained indisposed to
introduce reduced rates; but when Lord Clanricarde was appointed
Postmaster-General there was a change of policy. Lord Clanricarde came
to the conclusion that the time was ripe for a reduction of rates in
British North America, although he was convinced that such a reduction
would entail heavy postal deficits in all the provinces. It would be for
the provincial Legislatures to make good these deficits, and he
concluded it was therefore expedient that the full control of the
service should be handed over to the provincial authorities, subject to
certain conditions imposed with the view of preventing friction between
the provinces over the transit across the sea-board provinces of mails
for or from the interior.

Lord Elgin, Secretary of State for the Colonies, suggested to the
Governor-General[122] that one or two members of the Executive Councils
of Canada, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island should
meet at Montreal to discuss the question and mature a plan, which could
be submitted to the respective Legislatures, for the assumption by the
provinces of the administration of the Post Office. A conference was
arranged, and a plan for the establishment of a uniform system
throughout the British North American Colonies elaborated.

The conference made clear that in the repeated remonstrances against the
"transfer of assumed surplus receipts" to the revenue of the British
office there was no desire on the part of the provinces to make the Post
Office a source of revenue, or, indeed, to call into question the
prudent management of the Imperial Government; but that the
remonstrances were prompted by a growing conviction of the great
importance of an efficient postal system as a factor in their social and
commercial welfare, and as "a means in a new country of extending