In 1840 a Commission was appointed. Its attention was directed more especially to the faulty administration of the office and the excessive rates of postage. To remedy the former, and to make the administration more amenable to local control, they suggested placing the Deputy Postmaster-General under the control of the Governor-General in all matters which did not conflict with the authority of the Postmaster-General in England. As to postage, they were satisfied that the rates at that time in operation were too high. They considered that the rates should be such as would yield a revenue sufficient to meet the expenses of the department, and no more; and in their view, if the revenue improved after the establishment of such rates, which there should be no difficulty in calculating, the proper course would be either to grant further facilities or further to reduce the rates. There should not in any case be a net revenue of any magnitude. The Commissioners themselves made an estimate of the rate which should fulfil the requirements they had detailed. In so doing they proceeded on much the same lines as Sir Rowland Hill in his pamphlet _Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability_. They had no difficulty in answering the demand for penny postage in British North America, a demand based on its successful inauguration in England. The circumstances in the two countries were not comparable. England, small and densely populated, the first industrial and commercial nation of the world, could not in such a matter be compared with a country of vast extent, sparsely peopled and almost entirely agricultural. While Sir Rowland Hill had been able to show that in the case of letters conveyed for comparatively long distances in England the actual cost of carriage was only one thirty-sixth part of a penny, the Commissioners found that in British North America the actual average cost of conveyance was no less than 3d., and the actual average total cost of dealing with letters no less than 5-1/2d. Uniformity of rate at a penny, which had been justified in England on existing facts of the service, could therefore find no similar justification in North America.