were less satisfactory in regard to the rates actually recommended. They
proposed a graduation according to distance of no less than five stages,
starting with as short a distance as 30 miles. For this the rate was
2d., and the scale rose to 1s. for distances over 300 miles. The only
virtues of the rates were that they were lower than those in operation
in the United States and were to be charged by weight.[119]

The chief recommendations of this report were carried out under the
authority of the Colonial Office. The weight basis for determining rates
of postage was adopted, and the Deputy Postmaster-General's authority
was restricted. His privilege of sending newspapers free of postage was
also taken away, and in compensation he was given a salary of [L]2,500 a
year--personal to himself, and high on account of his long enjoyment of
the lucrative newspaper privilege. That for his successor was fixed at
[L]1,500 a year. The agitation in the provinces in regard to the Post
Office continued during the succeeding years, but it was less vehement
and concerned itself more with the question of rates than with questions
of administration.

In 1842 a member of the headquarters staff of the British office (Mr. W.
J. Page) was commissioned to examine and reorganize the service in the
Maritime Provinces, with the object more especially of introducing such
measures of reform as should bring the expenditures of the department in
those provinces within the revenue. His reports throw a flood of light
on the state and methods of the service.[120] He found extraordinary
anomalies in the methods of charging postage, in the methods of
remunerating the Deputy-Postmasters, the couriers, and the Way Office
keepers, and in the relations subsisting between the Post Office and the
local Legislatures. The financial arrangements of the office were in a
condition which can only be described as chaotic. Postage was, of
course, chargeable on the total journey of the letter. But in Nova
Scotia letters were charged with a new rate at each office through which
they passed, and postage became an excessive charge on all letters which
passed through two or three offices. Deputy-Postmasters were paid a
percentage, usually 20 per cent., on the amount of postage collected by
them, but their chief remuneration in many cases arose from the right
which they exercised of franking all their private and business
correspondence, a consideration which they had princ