Stayner, to whom Gosford's suggestion was referred, opposed it vigorously. If, he argued, this concession were made to Lower Canada, immediate demands of the same character would be made by the other provinces. This would be followed by requests for the free transmission of members' correspondence, and the post office would speedily find itself in a deficit. It would be specially inadvisable to grant this privilege to Lower Canada, Stayner averred, as the postage received from that province, after deducting the British packet postage, which was the admitted due of the British post office, barely sufficed to pay the expenses of the service in the province. The revenues from Upper Canada exceeded the expenses by a considerable sum, and any extension of the advantages now enjoyed by Lower Canada, would be at the expense of the upper province. The first of the annual statements of revenue and expenditure for which the legislatures had been contending for many years was presented to the legislatures on the 17th of January, 1838. The statement contained an undivided account of the operations in Upper and Lower Canada. This was not quite satisfactory to the house in Upper Canada, but as the services for the conveyance of the mails ran from one province into the other, it was impossible to assign accurately to each province its share of the expense for their maintenance. As the statement showed a surplus of L11,264 for the years 1836-1837, the legislature of Upper Canada saw no reason for hesitating to press its demand that the franking privilege be granted to its members. They went, indeed, much further, and asked that the whole amount of the surplus revenue, which arose from the post office business in Upper Canada, be transferred to them. In support of their request, the legislature pointed out that, in the imperial act of 1834, it was provided that as soon as the consent of His Majesty should be signified to the bills of the several colonial legislatures, the net revenue from the post office in British North America should be distributed among the several provinces in the proportion indicated by their gross revenues; that the suspension of the legislature in Lower Canada, in consequence of the rebellion, made it impossible to procure joint legislative enactments; and the financial condition of Upper Canada made it necessary that the province should have at its disposal all the means to which it was legally entitled.