CHAPTER III

THE REMAINING PENCE ISSUES

A resume of the chief happenings of the year and other items of interest is given in the annual reports of the Postmasters General, and a brief summary of these first few years will not be without its importance here. It will be recalled that the Provincial Government took over the control of its posts on the 6th April, 1851, and by the Act to Amend The Post Office Act, passed 30th August, 1851,[33] the Postmaster General was required by statute to "report to the Governor General of the Province annually, for the purpose of being laid before Parliament at each Session, First. A report of Finances, Receipts and Expenditure of the Post Office Department for the year ending on the fifth day of April previous," etc., etc. Accordingly the first annual report of the Postmaster General was rendered on the 5th April, 1852. In it we find the following information:—

The gross receipts of the Department for the year under review are given as £71,788 18s. 5d. currency, a drop of over £20,000 from the previous year; but this is a good showing after all, for when it is remembered that the new uniform rate of postage was but one third the former average rate, it is readily figured out that correspondence nearly doubled under the new tariffs. This is confirmed by the following comparative statement of pieces mailed:—

One week preceding 5th April, 1851, No. of letters, 41,000; papers, 90,000.

One week preceding 5th April, 1852, No. of letters, 86,051[34]; papers, 101,000.

There were 243 new post offices added during the year and 1023 miles of post routes.

"An agreement was concluded with the Post Master General of the United States, which has continued in satisfactory operation since April, 1851, under which letters pass between any place in Canada, and any place in the United States, at a Postage rate of 6d. currency, per half oz., except to and from California and Oregon, when, the distance being over 3,000 miles, the rate is 9d. per half oz. Letters are posted on either side, paid or unpaid, at the option of the sender."

The total correspondence passing between the two countries is given as having a postage rating of $85,636.97.

The second annual report of the Postmaster General is dated the 31st March, 1853, and contains little of interest but statistics. 176 new post offices were established and 504 miles of new post routes added. The gross revenue of the Department for the fiscal year is given as £84,866.6.11½. and the total postage on the correspondence passing between Canada and the United States was $104,966.40.

The third report, of 31st March, 1854, speaks of a large reduction in the postal charges upon newspapers circulating within the Province and on certain classes of periodical prints, which took place on Feb. 1, 1854, but gives no further details. Concerning the British packet postage, however, the report says:—

Further on are the following recommendations:—

And again:—

Perhaps the most pregnant remark is one short statement:—"The use of stamps has materially increased"; for it will be remembered that the first annual report of the Postmaster General was pessimistic with regard to the employment of stamps, fearing that their use was diminishing.

The accounts accompanying the report contain but one item concerning stamps:—

Rawdon, Wright & Co., Postage Stamps furnished Post Office
Department                                        £12.11.3

This amount was of course only for printing supplies, evidently for the 250,000 3d. stamps received during the fiscal year.

In the fourth report, of 31st March, 1855, there are several items of interest. The lowering of the British packet rates proved a popular step, naturally, and the report states that "Notwithstanding the important reduction granted by the Imperial Government in the postage rate between this country and the United Kingdom in March, 1854," the results were as follows:—

British Packet Postage collected in Canada in year ending 31 March, 1855 (postage rate 8d. sterling) £16,449.14.3½.

British Packet Postage collected in Canada in year ending 31 March, 1854 (postage rate 1s. 2d. sterling) £17,495.1.4½. which was a drop of but six per cent. in receipts upon a reduction of over forty per cent. in the postal charge.

Again:—

The suggestions contained in the report for 1854 concerning the franking of official mail matter, and the payment of a fixed annual sum to the Post Office Department on this account, were acted upon, and the report states:—

The Act referred to was doubtless the following:—

There is a bit of conflict here. The "enactment clause" of the above Act makes it operative unequivocally on July 1, 1855. Yet the Postmaster General's report, just quoted, which is supposed to be for the fiscal year ending 31st March, 1855, distinctly states that the provisions of the above Act came into effect "in July last," which would seem to be July, 1854. The Act itself is not in error, so the discrepancy must lie in the Postmaster General's report. Probably the report was written much later in the year than March 31st, as it was not presented to Parliament until the fall session, and therefore gave opportunity to refer back to happenings in July.

The growth of the Department during the first four years under Provincial control is illustrated by the following table:—

The number of post offices had more than doubled; the length of the post routes had increased by fifty per cent; and although the revenue had dropped one quarter during the first year, owing to the reduction in postage rates, it had increased by half in the next three years; while the total correspondence between Canada and the United States had increased by two thirds in the same three years.

But the item that interests us particularly in this report reads:—

Thus part of the recommendation contained in the report for the preceding year was carried out.

In the accounts for the fiscal year we find the following entries:—

From this it would appear that the bill for engraving ("making") the new 10d. stamp was paid in the third quarter of the fiscal year, corresponding to the last quarter of 1854. According to the table of receipts from manufacturers in the "summary" already quoted,[35] the 10d. stamp was first received by the Post Office Department on Jan. 2, 1855. In Mr. King's "Reference List,"[36] however, the date "Dec. 5, 1854" is given as being "taken from used stamps on the original covers," but this must certainly be a mistake. The "summary" also gives the quantities issued to postmasters by quarters, and there were none issued (naturally) in the quarter ending Dec. 31, 1854. In the next quarter, ending Mar. 31, 1855, there were 16,200 issued to postmasters, so that the first issue probably took place soon after receipt, that is, in January, 1855. The total number received from the manufacturers in this first delivery was 100,080.

The plate for this stamp is stated to have been made up for printing sheets of 100 impressions in ten rows of ten, like the three values of 1851, and also to have had the eight marginal imprints. But there are reasons for thinking it may have been made to print 120 impressions, ten rows of twelve each, concerning which more will be said later. Suffice it to remark here that the number delivered (100,080) is exactly divisible by 120, making 834 full sheets, which is not the case if 100 is used. The normal color of the stamp is a very deep blue.

The design of the new 10d., illustrated as No. 3 on Plate I, corresponds in general style to the 6d. and 12d. of 1851, but the portrait in the central oval is of Jacques Cartier, the explorer and founder of Canada. There has been some discussion over the identity of the original, it having been claimed that the subject was Sebastian Cabot, the discoverer, just as the portrait on the 6d. stamp has been assigned to Lord Elgin, Governor-General of Canada from 1846 to 1854.[37] Unfortunately no circular announcing the issue of the stamp has come to hand, and, as seen from the quotation already given, the report of the Postmaster General does not give us the information. It is nevertheless a fact that the portrait represents Cartier, the original being a three-quarter length painting in the Hotel de Ville at St. Malo, France, the birthplace of Cartier. The inscriptions in the oval frame are in this case separated by a small picture of the beaver at the right, and three maple leaves at the left. The value is expressed as TEN PENCE, with the numerals "10" in the lower spandrels, followed by the letters "cy" for "currency." In the upper spandrels is the corresponding value in sterling money, expressed as "8d stg". The relation between sterling and currency values and their equivalents in the decimal coinage of the United States was fixed by law, and the matter seems important enough to reproduce the statute here.

Further supplies of the 10d. stamp were not needed for three years, the next lot, numbering 72,120, having been delivered during the year ending 30th Sept., 1858, according to the table of stamp statistics. These two lots were the only ones delivered, and the balance on hand when the decimal stamps appeared being 31,200, we find a total issue for the 10d. stamp of 141,000.

Puzzling questions seem to be the rule with this first series of Canadian stamps, and the 10d. is no exception. The stamp occurs, to all appearances, in at least two sizes, one of which has been termed the "wide oval" and the other the "narrow oval." These are well brought out by illustrations Nos. 70 (wide) and 71 (narrow) on Plate IV. Very likely the peculiarity was noticed much earlier, but it seems to have been brought to the attention of collectors generally for the first time by Mr. W. H. Brouse, in a paper read before the London Philatelic Society on Feb. 3, 1894.[38] We quote this entire:—

• First (a) the long and narrow;
• Second (b) the long and broad: and
• Third (c) the short and broad.

This may have been the first record of the peculiarity in the case of the Canadian stamps, but it was at least not the first time that variation in the dimensions of certain line engraved stamps, supposed to have been produced from the same original die, had been noted and discussed. We refer to the case of the early Ceylon stamps, which furnished food for contention in the philatelic press for many years. The first mention of a difference in the length of these seems to have been in December, 1864.[39] Ten years later the reference list of Ceylon prepared by the London Philatelic Society[40] noted the fact that the stamps of 1863 on unwatermarked paper were in general about a millimeter shorter in the vertical dimension than the succeeding issue on paper watermarked Crown C C, although the engraved designs were otherwise absolutely identical. Major Edw. B. Evans, in his catalogue,[41] appends a note on the unwatermarked stamps of 1863 as follows:—

Later, in 1887, Mr. T. K. Tapling, writing in Le Timbre-Poste,[42] claims the difference cannot be due to shrinkage of paper because the stamps have all shrunk evenly, and attributes it to some defect in the process of making the plates. He reasons thus:—

As a matter of fact the stamps did not shrink evenly, but very unevenly. Mr. W. B. Thornhill, writing on these same stamps in 1889,[43] says:—"You can hardly find two stamps of exactly the same measurements in the same value, though the difference in many cases is too small to signify"; and he proceeds to show the extreme variations in a carefully prepared table including every value on every variety of paper for issues from 1855 to 1867. The greatest variation in the vertical dimension seems to be about 1 mm. in 26 mm., or roughly 4%, and in the horizontal dimension about ¼ to ½ mm. in 19 mm. or roughly 1¼ to 2½%. These dimensional differences being so palpably existent, therefore, what factors are we to consider in looking for their cause? There seem to be but three: first, an original die or matrix for each different size; second, one original die only, whose impressions on the printing plate show variations resulting from the process of transferring them; third, a printing plate with all the impressions exact duplicates of the one original die, but whose reproductions in ink on dampened paper are varied by the shrinkage of the paper in drying.

Mr. Thornhill convinces himself by inspection that the first proposition is untenable; in fact its absurdity is at once apparent on a little thought, for the engraving of the original die is a laborious and costly piece of work, and that very fact, coupled with the comparative ease of exact reduplication by mechanical processes on the printing plate, furnishes the chief reason for the employment of this method of producing stamps. Since there is such a variety in the size of the stamps, therefore, the first theory would indicate many original dies, and this we know was not the case. Its refutation indeed is seen in the stamps themselves; for each original die, if differing in size from its fellows, meant a separate engraving, and it is humanly impossible to make these separate engravings exact duplicates, whereas, on the other hand, no appreciable variation in line or dot can be detected on the same stamp in its different sizes save the general expansion or contraction of the design, which is proportionate in all its parts. The different die or matrix theory is therefore thrown out on grounds of impracticability and absurdity.

Accepting the one original die proposition, then, Mr. Thornhill agrees with Mr. Tapling in turning down the shrinkage of paper theory and favoring the second supposition, that the variation comes on the plates and is due to the process of transference. Let us glance at this a moment. The original die is engraved on a block of soft steel of very fine and even quality. When finished it is tempered to a very great degree of hardness. Next the engraving is transferred by tremendous pressure to a transferring roller of similar soft steel, which is in turn hardened. In this process there might be an opportunity for a slight variation in the size of the transferred impression, due to the expansion and contraction of the steel in the tempering process. Next, this hardened transfer roller is impressed upon the printing plate of soft steel as many times as there are copies desired. These naturally all agree among themselves and with the transfer roller impression in size. Now when the printing plate in turn receives its hardening, there may again be a chance for a slight difference between the transfer roller and the plate impressions; but it is wholly unlikely that the plate impressions will vary much among themselves, otherwise the perfection of Mr. Jacob Perkins' invention, the chief merit of which was exact reduplication, would be impaired. As a matter of fact, the high grade and even quality of the steel necessarily employed, and the care naturally taken in hardening the plate, preclude any other than an even variation, if any, due to the tempering process. This means that such variations would be practically constant over the printing surface of the plate, and that therefore the impressions would still remain practically identical in size.

Where, then, does this bring us? With such numerous and well defined variations in dimensions in the printed stamps, we should look for the cause in the simplest and most natural method by which they could readily be produced, which is furnished by the third theory presented. Concerning this we quote from the London Philatelic Society's work on Ceylon:[44]—

So much for the Ceylon stamps, which we have discussed in extenso; but we have only to substitute in every case a reference to the first Canadian issues, particularly the 10d. which we started out with, to make the discussion apply with equal force in this case as in the other. The question is the same—the variations occur in the same way, the method of engraving and reproduction is the same, and the varieties in the paper are very similar.

Major Evans, in a reply to Mr. Thornhill's paper,[45] states that he tried some experiments in wetting a thin, tough note paper, and found an expansion of three per cent., while by stretching it he increased the expansion to eight per cent, without difficulty! Yet the greatest variation in Mr. Thornhill's table was only four per cent. Major Evans then tried some of the 1863 Newfoundland stamps, which he judged were on paper of almost the same nature as that of the unwatermarked Ceylons of the same year, and they gave precisely similar results.

Mr. Frank C. Young, who was in the printing business, also tells of similar experiments which he carried still further.[46]

Looking back now at Mr. Castle's tables,[47] we find his greatest variations in length amount to ¾ mm. in 22 mm., or roughly 3½%, and in width 1 mm. in 18 mm., or roughly 5½%—results entirely within bounds according to Major Evans' and Mr. Young's experiments, and doubtless settling once and for all the reason of the "three distinct varieties in design" of Mr. Brouse.

As for the paper actually used for the printing of the 10d. stamp, we find it a hard, white wove variety varying very much in thickness from a very thin, almost pelure quality, through which the design is quite plainly evident, to a medium and finally a considerably thicker quality. The pelure paper seems naturally to be the one on which the greatest variation in dimensions occurs, the long and broad size of the stamp coming principally on the thicker paper,[48] which is supposed to shrink the least upon drying and therefore keeps the printed impression nearest the size of the plate impression. The long and narrow impression, being the commoner variation, was probably due to the paper being fed to the press the same way of the "grain" as a rule, while the short and broad variation, which is much scarcer, occurred by an occasional sheet of paper being fed the other way of the "grain." That paper has a "grain" is readily proved by tearing a piece in one direction and then tearing it at right angles to the first tear; one will be found much easier of accomplishment generally than the other, and this "grain" doubtless has its due effect in the amount of shrinkage in one way or the other upon drying a dampened sheet.

One further variety we have to record in the 10d. stamp, this being a "shifted transfer" variety similar to that occurring in the 3d. value. In this case we find the letters A D A and S of "Canada Postage," and P E N of "Pence" showing a distinct doubling at the bottom, the transfer roller evidently having been set a little too high at first and a very slight impression made on the plate. The stamp has not been seen in a pair to prove its character absolutely, but it bears all the ear-marks of being a proper plate variety and not due to a careless impression when printing.

To continue again with the Postmaster General's reports. We find in that for 31st March, 1856, a note to the effect that the postage on letters to France had been once more reduced, this time to 10d. currency per ¼ oz., which gave further employment to the new 10d. stamp. There is also some information concerning the registry system, but this will be treated later under that head. One item is found in the accounts to interest us:—