The house of assembly argued that this act, which by later acts was declared to be in force in Canada, applied to the people of England, Ireland and colonies of North America and in the West Indies. The word "public," therefore, being used without limitation, or qualification, could not signify exclusively the people of Great Britain and Ireland, or of the colonies. On the contrary, being equally applicable to all who were within the purview of the act, it designated the people of all the dominions of the crown in which the postal revenue was to be levied. The statute thus carried on the face of it a parliamentary declaration that the colonies were entitled to a share of the post office revenues, and it enacted, by implication, that the amount of the share should be determined by parliament at some future period. Here followed a novel and ingenious application of the statute of 1778, which was enacted for the purpose of conciliating the colonies by conceding the point at issue between them and the mother country. The assembly stated that by this act it was declared that, for the peace and welfare of His Majesty's dominions, the net produce of all duties, which after the passing of that act were imposed by parliament upon the colonies, should be applied to the use of the colony in which it is levied. Unlike the assembly of Upper Canada, the assembly of Lower Canada did not maintain that the act of Queen Anne was annulled by the act of 1778. It will be remembered that the British post office rested its claim to collect the colonial postages on Queen Anne's act with its amendments, while the Upper Canada assembly asserted that the act of 1778, which was made part of the constitutional act of 1791, deprived the British government of any right it formerly had to impose a tax on the colonies. The Lower Canadian house of assembly made another use of the act of 1778. It submitted that, so far as postal revenues were concerned, it was the complement of the act of Queen Anne. The earlier act, in the view of the assembly, left the amounts of the shares of the postal revenues to which the colonies were entitled, to be determined by a future act of parliament, and the act of 1778 had this effect, if not in the letter, at least in its spirit; and consequently Lower Canada, as one of the colonies had a fair and equitable claim to the net produce of the post office revenue levied within the province, after deducting the expenses of the post office established therein.