Within the northern district, the centre of which was at New York, there was a well-organized mail service, in which all existing travelling facilities were employed to the limit of their usefulness.[73] Mails were transported regularly as far south as Virginia and as far north and east as Quebec and Halifax. Within the better settled parts of the country, the service was excellent. Before the Revolution, two trips were made weekly between New York and Boston, and three between New York and Philadelphia. From Quebec to Montreal, there were two trips every week. The courier service at this time was quite equal, if not superior, to the service in England. The financial affairs of the American post office flourished. For the three years ending July 1764, there was a surplus revenue of L2070.[74] The succeeding years, though satisfactory, were not equal to those up to 1764.[75] But the political troubles were rendering the post office an object of unpopularity, and making it a duty on the part of the patriots to employ agencies other than the post office for the transmission of their letters. As these unofficial agencies were usually satisfied with a much lower compensation than the post office demanded, the pleasant circumstance arose for the patriot that the line of interest coincided with the line of duty. During the period between the establishment of the post office in Canada in 1763, and the outbreak of the war of the Revolution in 1775, the post office pursued on the whole an even, uneventful course. Canada did not entirely escape the influence of the sentiments which in the older colonies were leading to the Revolution; and, as the war approached, the post office was made to feel the effects. There were, at the time of the peace of 1763, along with the seventy thousand Canadians which made up nearly the whole of the population, a number of the older British subjects, most of whom had come from the British American colonies. At this time they numbered about two hundred, and when the war broke out in 1775, the number had doubled. These new-comers to Canada were not without the usual practical ability of Americans, and they very soon gathered into their hands the greater part of the business of the colony. They were, however, a source of much trouble and offence to the governor, and to their Canadian fellow subjects. The governor reported that their arrogance, and repugnance to the social and religious customs of the new subjects--the former subjects of France--as well as the factious opposition they displayed to the mode of government then existing, retarded seriously the progress of the efforts which were made towards conciliating the Canadians to the new regime.