ay's notice, through the Post Office
and post free, have to be purchased at present in the most devious way
through a remote agent in London. There is no public reason whatever why
a more intimate connection should not be established between the
Stationery Office and the Post Office."--Ibid.

"It would be the simplest thing in the world to have a complete,
business-like catalogue of Government publications, kept standing in
type and reissued and reprinted quarterly, distributed to every post
office, and by its means one ought to be able to order whatever one
wanted at once, pay for it on the spot, and get it delivered to any
address in Great Britain in the next twenty-four hours."--Ibid.

[310] _Report of Special Committee, House of Assembly, Lower Canada_,
11th February 1832, p. 10.

[311] Sir Francis Freeling replied to the petition. He said the practice
of his Deputy in North America was not illegal, but was based on an Act
of Parliament authorizing certain of his officers to circulate
newspapers by post; that as it had been in existence since the first
establishment of the Post Office in the colony, the petitioners must
have entered into the business with a full knowledge of the charge to
which their publications would be subject if sent by post; there was no
stamp duty in the colonies to give the publishers a right to free
transmission; and, moreover, the amount of the charge was less than the
similar charge in the United States.

[312] "Mr. Howe was very loose, and rarely took any steps to obtain or
enforce the payments of the amounts due to him for the transmission of
Journals through the Post....

"I cannot look upon it as the mere collection of a private source of
emolument to the officer, but I conceive that the Department is
interested in the question not only inasmuch as the amount received from
this source goes in aid of a larger salary to the officer, but that
whenever the time comes that the substitution of a postage rate on
newspapers supersedes the present mode of sending them, a due
enforcement of such rate will be most unfavourably received, if a free
transmission has been previously permitted from the negligence of the
party to whom the collection of the charge was deputed and whose
perquisite it was."--Report of Mr. Page, 1842 (_British Official
Records_).

[313] "It may fairly be viewed in the same light as the amounts annually
granted by the Legislature for roads and bridges, and for the su