As illustrating the difficulty of moving the general post office to recognize the responsibility, which its claims of a monopoly seemed to impose on it, Dr. Rolph, who represented the county of Middlesex in the house of assembly, stated[190] that before the post office was opened at Delaware, he had made application to the deputy postmaster general for a post office in Middlesex county, and was told that the office would be established in the county if he would guarantee the expenses of the conveyance of the mails, but that his application could not be considered on any other terms. As individual effort was plainly hopeless, the subject was taken up by the house of assembly of Upper Canada. The house dealt with the question vigorously, but not on the lines suggested by the foregoing review of the state of the postal service. More serious aspects of the case engaged their attention. Men on the streets and in farm houses believed that they were victims of imposition on the part of the deputy postmaster general, and that he was charging them more for the conveyance of their letters than the imperial statutes warranted, high as the legitimate charges were. Discussion on these grievances brought the people forward to another point, and they asked themselves by what right the British government imposed on a self-governing community an institution like the post office, which not only fixed its charges without reference to the people of Upper Canada, but which insisted on preventing the people from establishing an institution of the same sort under their own authority. It was to these questions that the house of assembly addressed itself. The rates of postage which were charged in Canada, were collected under the authority of an act of the imperial parliament passed in 1765. This act amended the act of Queen Anne's reign, which was regarded as the charter of the post office in British America. The rates, as fixed by the act of 1765, were, for a single sheet of paper weighing less than an ounce, fourpence-halfpenny currency, if the distance the letter was carried did not exceed sixty miles; if the distance were from sixty to one hundred miles, the charge was sevenpence; from one hundred to two hundred miles, ninepence, and for every one hundred miles beyond two hundred miles, twopence. The first inquiry of the house was as to whether these rates, and no more, were charged for conveyance in Upper Canada. On February 29, 1820, William Allan, postmaster of York, was called to the bar of the house, and questioned as to the rates charged by him for letters to the several post offices in Upper Canada. Allan did not know the distance to the post offices, but he furnished the table of rates which had been given to him. The house asked one of its members, Mahlon Burwell, a land surveyor, to state the several distances, when it appeared that every rate charged by the postmaster of York, was higher than the imperial act warranted.[191]