It was made up of three factors: the ocean postage of four cents, the United States postage of nineteen or twenty-five cents--according to the point at which the Canadian border was reached--and the inland Canadian postage. The charge on a single letter to Quebec was forty-seven cents instead of ninety-two cents, which would be due if sent by the packet route. To Montreal, Kingston, York and Amherstburg, the postage on a letter from London or Liverpool was thirty-one cents, forty-seven cents, forty-one cents and sixty-one cents, as against ninety-six cents, one dollar and four cents, one dollar and twelve cents and one dollar and twenty-four cents respectively. Letters to York coming from New York had the advantage of a daily conveyance to Lewiston, where the transfer to the Canadian border office at Queenstown was made, and of the lower charges which the United States post office imposed for long distances. These figures, the lowest then attainable, inevitably suggest comparisons. It is only a few years since good citizens were rejoicing that the postage rate between the mother country and Canada was brought down from five cents to two cents a letter. Here was a link of empire of daily utility. Communication could be kept up between the British immigrant and his friends at home without too heavy a draft on slender purses. His heart would remain British, and as he prospered he would induce others of his friends and neighbours to come over and settle. A glance backward will show how little these agencies of empire were able to effect in our grandfather's time. The lowest possible postage charge from London to York fifty years ago was forty-one cents, and that would carry no more than one sheet of paper weighing less than an ounce. If within the folds of this sheet were found another piece of paper no larger than a postage stamp, the charge of conveyance from New York to York was doubled, and with the ocean postage of four cents, the poor immigrant would have to pay seventy-eight cents for his letter. If the letter weighed an ounce, that is, if it were such a letter as would pass anywhere within the British Empire for four cents, the charge for it coming from London to York would be one dollar and fifty-two cents. Finally, if this ounce letter were sent by the All-Red route, that is by the British packet to Halifax and thence over British soil to York, the postage charge would be four dollars and forty-eight cents. Imperial sentiment must have rivalled wit in economy of expression in those days. While the British post office was unwilling to encourage the use of the United States mails for the conveyance of letters between Canada and Great Britain, it was anxious to put the British packet service on a better footing. But the service had been going from bad to worse, and it had reached a stage where it satisfied nobody.