The communication between the Maritime provinces and the mother country was the subject of some discussion. Halifax was determined to retain, and extend the utility of the packet service at all costs. Owing to the greatness of the charges, and the long delays, the Canadian merchants made but little use of the Halifax packets, but had their letters sent by way of New York. The merchants of New Brunswick insisted on the same privilege. The provincial government established two courier services between St. John and Fredericton, and St. Andrews on the United States boundary, and the United States post office arranged to have the British mails for New Brunswick conveyed by its couriers to Robbinstown, a point in Maine a short distance from St. Andrews. Against this Nova Scotia protested. John Howe, the elder, came out of his retirement in 1820, and made a strong plea for an exclusive packet service between England and Halifax, the vessel to remain at Halifax for one week before returning. He would have the public despatches for New York and Bermuda brought to Halifax, and from that place forwarded to their destination by one of the war vessels in the harbour or by a packet kept for the purpose. Buchanan, the British consul at New York, urged the opposite view, that all the British mails for the colonies should be sent by way of New York. Dalhousie, who was lieutenant governor in Nova Scotia, at the time supported Howe's view, and matters remained as they were. The question of newspaper postage was agitated in the Maritime provinces, as well as in the provinces of Canada. Indeed it would be inconceivable that publishers anywhere could be satisfied with the arrangements then in operation. But, most curiously, when the question came before the house of assembly in Nova Scotia, the sympathies of that body ran, not with the publishers, but with the deputy postmaster general. In 1830, Edmund Ward, a printer, who published a newspaper in Fredericton, petitioned the legislature to be relieved of the charges for the conveyance of his paper. The post office committee of the house of assembly in Nova Scotia took the application into their consideration. The committee reported[239] to the house that, having examined the imperial acts, they were of opinion that it was no part of the duty of the deputy postmaster general to receive, or transmit by post, newspapers printed in the colonies, or coming from abroad except from Great Britain. They found, moreover, that the secretary of the general post office in London, under this view of the case, had for a long time made a charge for each paper sent to the colonies by packet, the proceeds from which he retained to his own use. It also appeared that about sixty years before that date (that is about 1770), the deputy postmaster general made a charge of two shillings and sixpence per annum on each newspaper forwarded to country subscribers by post, which was acquiesced in by all the publishers at that time.