Trips were made during the winter of 1853, and throughout the summer of 1854, but there was so general a disregard of the terms of the contract, that it was terminated, and a contract was made with Hugh Allan in September 1855.[301] The new contractor entered upon his engagement with laudable energy; and at the end of the first season the postmaster general of Canada was able to make a comparison between the Canadian service and that to the port of New York.[302] On the westbound voyages the Canadian steamers were practically a day slower than the Cunard steamers--the Allan steamers taking twelve days, twenty and a half hours, to eleven days and twenty-two hours occupied by vessels of the Cunard line. The Canadian steamers were also slower than the Collins line on these trips by four hours. But on the voyage to Great Britain, the Canadian line made the speediest trips of the three. These steamers took but eleven days two hours, while the Cunard steamers were eleven hours and the Collins thirty hours longer in reaching Liverpool. It was with the successful inauguration of the Canadian service that the friction with the British government began. There developed immediately a clash of interests. The first note of dissatisfaction came from Great Britain. The postmaster general communicated to the colonial secretary[303] the information that the earnings of the packet service were much reduced by the fact that the Canadian post office was sending its correspondence by the first steamer that sailed whether it was British or American, and not confining its despatches to the steamers of the Cunard line. To the British post office, the Canadian line was an American line, and in spite of all protests and remonstrances, it insisted on treating the Allan line steamers as foreign. Ordinarily there would be no practical consequence of this wilful misunderstanding, but as letters conveyed by the Cunard line were charged eightpence the half ounce, while those carried by the American lines were made to pay fourteen pence, the hostility to the Canadian enterprise was marked. The postmaster general did not stop at this point, and leave the public on both sides of the Atlantic to consult their own interests as to whether they would send their letters by the Canadian or British subsidized lines. Taking up the case of interests adversely affected by the discriminatory rates, he pointed out that, as many unpaid letters were sent by the American lines, recipients of these letters had to pay sixpence more than if the letters were sent by the Cunard line.