Better postal deal needed

The owners of the steamship California, having been handsomely compensated for a long time back for carrying our mails between San Francisco and Victoria, appear disposed to treat the Colony in anything but a generous spirit. The subsidy heretofore paid them having been discontinued, they announced by telegraph that they intend to give Victoria the “go-by” — to sail to Port Townsend, Seattle, Steilacoom and Olympia, and we presume (although the dispatch does not so state) to touch at Victoria after having called at all those places.

Nothing is said about the Colonial mails, and it is safe to conjecture that they will remain at San Francisco. Admiral George Fowler Hastings, having made arrangements for the carriage of the Naval mail by the Company, will receive it via Port Townsend. We feel that we cannot condemn too strongly the course adopted by Ben Holladay and Charles Brenham, the owners of the line.

They can have little or no freight and but few passengers for ports on the Sound, and their only object in going there before coming here is to force this Colony into a renewal of the mail subsidy.

So far as the arrangements of that firm with the Colony are concerned, they have nothing to complain of. Within a very brief period they have received $28,000 in gold from us, and out of the very large sum paid for each trip, a liability of only $1,500 remains undischarged.

The Government, we believe, offered the Company $500 per trip, which offer, it is said, they indignantly spurned, demanding $750 per trip from the Colonial Government in addition to the $250 paid them by Admiral Hastings.

Whether the Company are legally entitled to a single cent for the service is a matter we leave the Government to ascertain. Certain it is, however, that upon every letter leaving this Colony for England is paid the sum of 29 cents, only five cents of which passes into the Colonial exchequer.

The remaining 24 cents are paid to whom? And for what? To the Imperial Government? Then the Imperial Government is bound to make such arrangements with the Government of the United States as will compensate that power for the expense and trouble of passing the letters over their postal routes or conveying them in any of their subsidized steamers to a point nearest the point at which a subsidized English steamer touches.

But if (as we suspect to be the case) one-half of the 24 cents paid by our people goes to compensate the American Government for conveying the letters through their territory or upon their mail steamers, then either the Imperial or the Colonial Government is to blame for not enforcing the terms of the arrangement.

We have a dim recollection of a postal treaty between the United States and the Home Government, by the terms of which it is provided that the mails for the North American Colonies shall be carried over any mail route of the former power — either by sea or land — to the point of connection with a British mail steamer or a British post office.

If such a treaty be in existence, then the colonists are entitled, upon payment of the sum additional to that charged by the Colonial Government, to have their letters carried free of every other charge over American Postal routes, and delivered to British postal agents in North America or in Great Britain.

We are strengthened is this opinion from the fact that the carriers of the mail on Puget Sound receive from the American Government $7,000 per annum for “conveying the mail between Olympia (the terminus of the overland postal route) and Victoria,” touching at certain specified “way ports.”

Nothing is paid by our people in addition to the ordinary postal rates for the carriage of letters to or from Canada via Puget Sound, a fact which shows that a treaty or arrangement of some kind compelling the delivery is in existence. However, whether there be an arrangement of the kind between the two Governments or not, it is quite evident that our local Government has not troubled itself to inquire into the real state of the case.

They have gone on from month to month meeting the exorbitant demands of Holladay and Brenham, until at last they are compelled, through their inability to meet pecuniary obligations, to ask a reduction in the rate.

This reduction the steamship owners have most ungenerously refused to accede to, and have coupled with that refusal an implied threat to pass the port in future if the subsidy be not renewed at their own figure.

If we be really at the mercy of this Company — if there be no other steamer fitted for the service on the coast that can be procured — we propose a temporary renewal of the subsidy, and urge that the Colonial Government shall put itself in communication with the Home authorities to ascertain what our treaty rights really are, and to demand that for the extra postage now paid upon every letter sent out of or received in the Colony from abroad, our mails shall be delivered here free of any extra charge or subsidy, for as the case now stands, we are absolutely paying double for our mail facilities, such as they are.

The Daily British Colonist and Victoria Chronicle Nov. 30, 1867