Leading Loyalists, men who had given up their comforts and taken on themselves the severest hardships for the sake of the old connections, thought no more than the merest rebels of evading the postal laws, and sending their letters by any convenient means that presented themselves. Ward Chipman, the solicitor general of New Brunswick, in writing to Edward Winslow in London, tells him that he would write more freely if it were not for the enormous expense, but he would tax the good will of every person he could hear of, who was going to England. No person was allowed to go on a journey, long or short, without a pocketful of letters entrusted to him by his friends, unless he were unusually disobliging. When he reached his destination, he either delivered the letters in person, or posted them in the local post office, whence they were delivered at a penny apiece. The service as established in 1788 was carried on unchanged until the war of 1812 made certain alterations in the routes necessary to secure the safe conveyance of the mails. The presence of American privateers in the bay of Fundy rendered the passage of the packets between St. John and Digby hazardous. The course down the St. John river and across the bay to Digby was, therefore, temporarily abandoned.[229] The courier with the mails from Quebec did not continue the river route farther south than Fredericton. At that point he turned inland, taking a road which led to the juncture with the old Westmoreland road which ran from St. John to fort Cumberland, on the eastern boundary of New Brunswick. The road from fort Cumberland was continued on through Truro to Halifax. For a short period before the war and during its course, the deputy postmaster general was under steady pressure on the part of the provincial governors to extend the means of communication throughout the province of Nova Scotia.[230] Population was increasing rapidly--the census of 1817 gave it as 82,373--and settlement was well distributed over all parts of the province. The governors for their part were anxious to have the means of corresponding easily with the militia, who were organized in every county. The deputy postmaster general was in a position of considerable embarrassment. His orders from the home office as respects the expenditure of the postal revenue were as explicit as those under which Heriot was struggling in Canada. He won through his difficulties, however, with more success than attended Heriot's efforts, although he did nothing that Heriot did not do, to meet the two incompatible demands of the post office, on the one side, that he should establish no routes which did not pay expenses, and of the local administration on the other, that he should extend the service wherever it seemed desirable to the governor.