As Sydenham observed, the new settlers, while living in great material comfort, had little money at their disposal. To them it was an impossibility to pay the postage--four shillings or more--which had accumulated on a letter on its way from the inland parts of the United Kingdom to the backwoods in which they were making homes for themselves. They were served, and far from inefficiently, by the American ocean sailing packets, which left Liverpool weekly for New York; and unless the steam line were able to provide for the exchange of their letters at rates as low as they were paying, they would no more patronize the new line than they had the ten-gun sailing brigs, by which the British packet service was then carried on. Stayner, with full knowledge of the conditions he had to meet, was convinced that the first step towards an effective reform was to sweep away the cumulative rates made up of the inland charges in the United Kingdom, the ocean postage and the inland colonial charge; and replace them by one fixed rate which would carry the letter from any post office in the United Kingdom to any post office in the colonies. When he first laid the proposition before the postmaster general, the Duke of Richmond, he recommended that this uniform rate should be two shillings a single letter. But after some years' opportunity for reflection, aided beyond doubt by the argument of Rowland Hill for penny postage in Great Britain, Stayner concluded that his proposed rate was too high, and that, at one shilling and sixpence, or even one shilling and threepence, the increased patronage of the line by the public in the motherland and the colonies, would bring about an actual augmentation of the revenue. How great the reduction in the charges would be, if Stayner's proposition were carried into effect, may be gathered from the fact that one of the elements making up the total postage was much in excess of the whole sum suggested by Stayner. On the supposition that the steamships landed the Canadian mails at Halifax, every letter brought by that means to Toronto would be subject to a charge of two shillings and ninepence for the conveyance from Halifax to Toronto, to say nothing of the shilling charge for its passage from Liverpool to Halifax, and the postage from the office of posting in the United Kingdom to Liverpool. While negotiations with Cunard were still in progress, and the colonies waited expectantly for what was to be achieved by the new service, Stayner was much surprised and gratified to receive from the general post office in London a circular addressed to the postmasters in the United Kingdom stating that the postmaster general had decided to do away altogether with the inland rate or rather to incorporate it with the ocean rate which thenceforward would be one shilling.