Looking outwards from Quebec, the committee observed that there was no postal service whatever in the counties of Montmorency and Saguenay, which embraced the earliest settlements in the country. On the south shore of the St. Lawrence, and along the Etchemin and Chaudiere rivers, there was a wide stretch of well-settled country entirely lacking the means of communication with the capital, though but a short distance from it. From Quebec eastward to the New Brunswick boundary there were over 100,000 people, and the only postal accommodation for this great extent of territory was afforded by seven post offices lying along the line of the post route between Quebec and Halifax. The peninsula of Gaspe, with a line of fishing settlements all along the coast, had but two mails each year. The committee regretted particularly the situation as regards the conveyance of newspapers. The post office was under no legal obligation to carry them except as letters, and yet there was no other means available for their circulation. If the law had not conferred on the post office a monopoly of carrying letters, the publishers would have a resource. They might establish a transportation system, and meet their expenses by carrying letters as well as newspapers. The secrecy with which the affairs of the post office were surrounded was much deprecated by the committee, as giving ground for speculation and suspicion that could not fail to do harm to the institution. If, under the present system of imperial control, an adequate service were rendered, there would have been no just grounds for complaint. But if the interests of the province were not regarded, the people were entitled to object to their being limited to a means of conveyance which did not meet their requirements, and to assume that the revenue arising from the service was not properly applied. The committee in conclusion expressed their confidence in the good will of both the postmaster general and his deputy in Canada, and their belief that their complaint had only to be laid before the governor general to secure favourable consideration. Before concluding to withhold from the house of assembly, the information it sought, Stayner with characteristic prudence had enlisted the support of the governor general, who coincided with him in his view as to the impropriety of his submitting to the questioning of the house regarding the affairs of a branch of the imperial service. When he laid the course he had pursued before the postmaster general, Stayner also gained his approval for the zeal and sagacity he had shown.