At that moment, Stayner further told the committee, the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada required not less than five hundred offices, that is, practically double the number then in operation, and in ten years, at least one thousand offices would be necessary to provide the requisite accommodation. With proper assistance he could establish and put into successful operation all that were wanted at the rate of one hundred a year. Less than that scale of advancement would fail to satisfy the public. The complaints of the people had become so loud and threatening that, unless they were speedily met, Stayner was apprehensive they would be engrafted upon the catalogue of provincial grievances. Before he left England, Stayner had the postmaster general's promise that two surveyors would be at once appointed. He had waited as long as he felt that he dared, but the situation had become so alarming, that he had taken it upon himself to appoint two surveyors who would act under his directions, until regular appointments could be made. After Stayner laid before the houses of assembly in the two provinces the various returns they had called for, committees were struck in each house to consider the information contained in the statements. The committee in Lower Canada took the evidence of Stayner and of William Lyon Mackenzie who happened to be in Quebec at the time, conferring with the reform leaders in Lower Canada. Mackenzie's statement was a general arraignment of the administration of the post office. He declared that, as then constituted, the post office in the opinion of the assembly of Upper Canada, was an illegal institution, monopolizing the conveyance of epistolary correspondence which it taxes heavily, and appropriating the proceeds in England, without the knowledge and consent of the assembly. It arbitrarily and often capriciously, the reformer from Upper Canada complained, fixed the sites of post offices, and dismissed and appointed the incumbents. It resolved that one section of the country, though thickly settled, should have no post offices, while another part which was almost destitute of inhabitants had regular mails. Newspapers were taxed at such a rate as the post office thought fit, and the proceeds were held by the deputy postmaster general as his perquisite. In short, Mackenzie was emphatic in his declaration that the establishment was a poor substitute for a provincial post office, which would be regulated by law, and its revenues disposed of by the authority of the legislature. He gave some curious illustrations of the inequalities which marked the operation of the newspaper regulations.