The post office had already begun to feel the inconvenience of separating the control of the _maitres de poste_ from the office of the deputy postmaster general, as these officials declined to continue to carry the mail couriers on terms more favourable than those granted to the ordinary travelling public. The colonial office was inclined to the post office view on the subject, but the lieutenant governor was firm in maintaining the position he had taken. The _maitres de poste_, he stated, were habitants who possessed, each of them, a small property which rendered them quite independent. Their service, which was to carry passengers on the king's road, was an onerous one, and the advances in the price of the articles of life, coupled with the fact that their exclusive privilege was systematically disregarded, made them reluctant to take the appointments. Men of this kind, Milnes declared, required management as they would not submit to coercion. Finlay through his personal influence with the _maitres de poste_ had managed to obtain the conveyance of the mails at sixpence a league, which was only half the charge made to the public for the same service. For some time before his death, Finlay had difficulty in inducing the _maitres de poste_ to continue this favourable arrangement, and on his death they refused to work under it any longer. The _maitres de poste_ had the full sympathy of the lieutenant governor who saw no reason for the discrimination in favour of the post office. Although he endeavoured to obtain a favourable arrangement for the mail couriers, he considered it would be most impolitic on the part of the post office to insist on continuing to occupy their position of advantage. But valuable as the post house system was in the early period of the country's growth, it soon had to yield to a higher class of travelling facility. As travel in the colony increased the two-wheeled _caleches_ drawn by a single horse and barely holding two persons would no longer do. The changes at the post houses, every hour or little more, with the long delays while the horses were secured and harnessed, were very wearisome. Before Heriot's term expired, stage coaches had been placed on the principal roads. In leaving the old system and its ways, it will be interesting to record the impressions of Hugh Gray, an English gentleman, who travelled from Quebec to Montreal in 1806.[156] The mode of travel, he said, would not bear comparison with that in England, and the inns were very far from clean, but he found many things to lighten the hardships of travel in Canada. If, leaving England aside, he compared the accommodations in Canada with those in Spain, Portugal, or even in parts of France, he found the balance in favour of Canada.