The circumstances of the country were making a continuance of this repressive course impossible. Settlements were springing up too rapidly, and the demands for postal facilities were becoming too insistent to leave it possible to delay these demands until formal sanction was obtained from England. In November 1829, Stayner informed the postmaster general that, in Upper Canada, the lieutenant governor, the legislature, the merchants, and indeed the whole population, were calling for increased postal accommodation. In the United States, Stayner pointed out, almost every town and village had a daily mail, and this excited discontent with the comparative infrequency of the Canadian service. He suggested that he be allowed to expand the service, and to increase the frequency of the courier's trips, wherever he was convinced that the ensuing augmentation of correspondence would more than meet the additional expense. Stayner had been so fortunate as to impress the postmaster general with the fact that a very considerable discretion might safely be left with him. Besides this, the postmaster general was under a growing sense of the insecurity of the legal foundations of the post office in the colonies. To Stayner's gratification he received a letter from the postmaster general[211] enjoining him to make it his study to extend the system of communication in all directions where the increase of population and the formation of new towns and settlements seemed to justify it. This was a wise step. It gave the department a representative, zealous in its interests, as intimately acquainted with local conditions as the assemblies themselves, and thoroughly competent to undertake the responsibility devolving upon him. Stayner's commission placed New Brunswick as well as Upper and Lower Canada, under his charge. But before the close of 1828 the service in New Brunswick was transferred to the control of the deputy postmaster general for Nova Scotia.[212] This change was made at the instance of the deputy of Nova Scotia, who, being in England at the time, explained to the postmaster general how much more closely New Brunswick was associated with Nova Scotia than with Quebec, and pointed out that orders from home affecting New Brunswick and requiring immediate attention were delayed in that they had to pass from Halifax through New Brunswick, and then return to New Brunswick. All the other branches of the imperial service in New Brunswick had their local headquarters in Halifax. At the time Stayner was placed in charge of the postal service in the Canadas, the system of communication was still simple enough to be described in a few lines. There was a trunk line from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Niagara and Amherstburg on the western boundaries of Upper Canada. The distances were to Niagara, one thousand three hundred and fifty-six miles, and to Amherstburg, one thousand five hundred and sixteen miles.