Every side of Stayner's work was vigorously attacked in the _Gazette_. Complaints were made of a lack of necessary mail routes, and of an insufficiency of service on existing routes. It was charged also that Stayner's attention was confined to the older and more thickly settled districts, which yielded the largest revenues. But, according to Stayner, Armour's silence could have been purchased by a share of the official printing which Stayner declined to give him. Whatever grounds Stayner had for making the insinuation, there can be no question as to the energy with which Armour bent himself to the task of exposing the methods of the post office. When his papers were held in the Montreal post office on account of his refusal to prepay the postage, he entered actions for large amounts against Stayner. These failed, as the courts declined to deal with the cases. He then addressed himself to the legislature. In the beginning of 1831, Armour and a number of other publishers presented a petition to the house of assembly of Lower Canada, setting forth the high rates they had to pay as postage for the transmission of their newspapers, and the impropriety of Stayner's practice in appropriating the proceeds; and asking that they might be put on an equal footing with the publishers in Great Britain. The petition was handed over to a committee of the house, who proceeded to investigate the facts. In this they were only moderately successful, as the only person who was in a position to give them the information they desired, declined to answer the interrogatories put to him.[216] Stayner, in reply to inquiries as to the financial condition of the post office and the disposition of the surplus revenues, pleaded that he was employed by a branch of the imperial government, which in none of its instructions had recognized the right of the assembly to institute the inquiries being made. To answer the questions put to him by the committee might lead to disclosures, which would involve him with his superior officers until he had received specific instructions from them on the point. But though little was learned from Stayner, the committee had obtained some useful information from inquiries made in the British house of commons by Joseph Hume. It appeared that the large sum of L36,000 had been received by the British treasury as surplus revenue for the years 1825 and 1826. Stayner endeavoured to lessen the importance of this fact by declaring that more than half the amount was postage paid by the army, which was not properly chargeable with postage at all. The committee declined to accept this view; and while perfectly friendly to Stayner, and admitting that he had effected some considerable improvements, they were persuaded that the service was far from being what the people had a right to expect.