Franklin, it will be remembered, contended that these sums were not a tax, but simply compensation for services rendered by the post office. The government, which founded an argument for the legality of its course in laying taxes in America, on the fact that the colonies had hitherto contentedly paid postage on the letters conveyed by the post office, and made no objection that the profits of the American post office should be sent to England, insisted that the postage collected was a tax. Simcoe had no doubt on the subject himself. He fully shared the earlier view of the British government, and proceeded to a further discussion of the subject. In 1778, in a belated attempt to stay the progress of the rebellion in the colonies by a course of conciliation, the government, by an act of parliament,[147] renounced the right it had hitherto claimed of taxing the colonies except so far as might be necessary for the regulation of commerce; and in the case of such regulative duties, the proceeds from them were to ensure to the benefit, not of the home government, but of the colony from which the duties were collected. Whether a post office tax was to be classed among duties for the regulation of commerce was a point on which Simcoe could not quite make up his mind. But if it were to be so regarded, then by the act of 1778, which was embodied in the constitutional act of 1791, the net produce from the Upper Canadian post office should be appropriated to the use of the province, and the question Simcoe asked was whether it did not lie with the general assembly of the province, rather than with the parliament of Great Britain, to superintend the public accounts of duties so levied and collected.[148] In order that the whole matter might be placed beyond doubt, Simcoe suggested that when a post office bill for the new province came to be drawn up, it should contain a preamble describing its connection with duties for the regulation of commerce, and vesting the collection of the tax in the deputy postmaster general of Lower Canada, who should be made accountable for the revenue so raised, to the legislature of Upper Canada. Dundas,[149] the home secretary, to whom the matter was submitted, expressed no decided opinion upon it, but suggested that bills of that nature ought not to be passed upon by the governor, but should be reserved in order that the king's pleasure might be signified regarding them. The question of a separate establishment for Upper Canada, as will be seen hereafter, occupied the attention both of the local government and of the general post office in England, but though several propositions were submitted by both sides, the objections to it were found insuperable.