As only 3d. stamps were received during the year, this of course refers to that value, and the price charged is found to be practically one shilling, currency, per thousand, or twenty cents American money.

In June of 1857 the Canadian Parliament made further changes in the newspaper rates, etc., according to the following Act:—

Although the enactment clause made the above Act operative on 1st August, 1857, because of which we should not expect it to affect the Postmaster General's report for the year ending 31st March, 1857, yet we find this report dated 30th September, 1857, thus including the year and a half from 1st April, 1856. Among other items of interest in this report we find the following:—

The above is the only reference we have to the issue of the 7½d. stamp. The accounts for the fiscal year ending 30th September, 1857, contain the following item:—

which must include the cost of dies and plates for the two new values. There is no record of the date of issue of the 7½d. stamp, as far as our research has gone. The London Society's work[50] gives it as June 2, 1857, but upon what authority is not stated. It will be recalled that a stamp of this value was suggested, in company with the 10d., in the Postmaster General's report for 31st March, 1854, as being the reduced rate granted in that same month on letters sent "direct from a Provincial Port, Quebec or Halifax," to England. The Halifax Philatelist states:[51]—"This stamp was rendered necessary on account of the contract between the Canadian Government and the Allan Line of Steamers in regard to carrying the mails, and by which contract the postage was reduced." It hardly seems to have been very "necessary" when it took three years at least to bring the Postmaster General's suggestion to a realization. Besides, the Allan Line steamers began their service over a year before the appearance of the stamp, and the rate it represented had even then been in force for two years, nor was it reduced for many years thereafter.

The Postmaster General's Report for 1856 says:—

The average time of passage is given as—Westward, 12 days, 20½ hours; Eastward, 11 days, 2 hours.

The design of the stamp was simply adapted from that of the discarded 12d. stamp, as will readily be seen from the illustration (No. 5 on Plate I). The inscriptions were changed to CANADA PACKET POSTAGE, which of course referred to the fast mail steamers then known as "packets," and not to any "parcel post" as is sometimes erroneously stated; and SIX PENCE STERLING, a new departure in labeling a Canadian stamp. Like the 10d. that preceded it, however, the corresponding values were inserted in the spandrels, "6d. stg." in the left hand pair and "7½d. cy." in the right hand pair. The stamp is generally listed under its "currency" value to conform with the rest of the set and avoid confusion with the regular "six pence" stamp. The normal color of the stamp is a dark green.

The 7½d. stamp is known to have been arranged on the plate for printing sheets of 120 stamps, ten rows of twelve stamps each, this being to facilitate the reckoning in English money. The eight marginal imprints appeared as on the other values. There was but one supply received, on the first order, of 100,080 stamps which, if we divide by 120, gives an even 834 sheets. Now, if we but glance back at the first supply received of the 10d. stamp[52] we find exactly the same number, evenly divisible by 120 but not by 100. The second supply of the 10d. stamp works out in exactly the same way,—72,120 makes an even 601 sheets at 120 per sheet. Is it not probable to suppose, therefore, in the absence of entire sheets or horizontal rows of the 10d. stamp, that the latter was also printed in sheets of 120, as previously suggested, instead of sheets of 100 as stated in Mr. King's article?[53]

When the issue of the decimal stamps took place, on July 1, 1859, there were 17,670 of the 7½d. stamps on hand, so that the total issue of this value was 82,410 copies.

As will be gathered from Mr. Brouse's paper, which we quoted in connection with the 10d. stamp, a similar variation in the width of the oval is to be found in the case of the 7½d. stamp, but the extremes are not so great and it is therefore not so noticeable. A glance at the table of measurements[54] will show that the variation in width is confined to a half millimeter and that in height to practically the same amount. Of course the discussion and conclusions detailed at length under the 10d. stamp apply with equal force in the present instance, and the fact that the 7½d. stamp is not found on the very thin paper probably accounts for the lack of extreme variations. It was printed upon paper of the same kind as used for the 10d., but only on the medium and thicker qualities. A pair of the stamps in juxtaposition, showing the wide oval and the narrow oval, will be found as numbers 67 and 68 respectively on Plate IV.

The last—and also least—of the pence issues was the half-penny stamp. There had been a need for this value since the introduction of stamps, for there were several rates that were impossible to make up with the denominations that were issued and which therefore had to be paid in money. Among these were the ½d. charge on newspapers from 1851 to 1855, the same charge per ounce on magazines and books during the entire period, the ½d. and 1d. carrier's fees, the 1d. rate on circulars and on soldier's letters, and the several 7½d. rates for letters and for the book post with England. But the Act last quoted,[55] which restored a charge on transient newspapers, seems to have been the direct cause of the belated issue of the half-penny stamp. The circular announcing its issue is as follows:[56]—

Post Office Department,
Toronto, 18th July, 1857.

The London Society's work gives the date of issue of the ½d. value as 18th July, 1857, and it is clearly seen from the preceding notice where the date was obtained. But it is more likely that the stamp was issued on 1st. August, the day the new rates took effect.

The new stamp was very plain, as will be seen from the illustration, No. 4 on Plate I. The profile head of Queen Victoria was quite evidently taken from the head on the British penny stamp. The usual inscription, CANADA POSTAGE, occupies the upper part of the oval frame, and ONE HALF PENNY the lower part, but the value is not expressed by numerals in the corners, as on all the other stamps of the issue, the spandrels being merely filled in with a reticulated pattern. The stamp was printed in sheets of 100, ten rows of ten, with the eight marginal imprints as described for the series of 1851.

The tables of statistics in the Postmaster General's reports give the number of ½d. stamps received previous to 1st. October, 1857, as 1,341,600; during the next fiscal year 1,258,920 were received; and between 1st. October, 1858 and 30th June, 1859, when they were superseded, 850,100 more arrived, making a total stock of 3,450,620. The balance on hand when the decimal series was issued was 60,660, which makes the total issue of the ½d. stamp 3,389,960.

The normal color of the stamp is a deep rose. It is found printed on a soft ribbed paper, with the ribbing both horizontal and vertical, as well as on the ordinary hard white wove paper of this issue in both the thin and thicker qualities.

The London Society's work has the following remarks:[57]—

We find that the original chronicle of these varieties was in Le Timbre-Poste in 1869. Concerning them M. Moens writes as follows:—

And in the next issue of the paper:—

We think all idea of a "surcharge" can be at once dismissed, as the raising of the value, particularly to 8d., would be a very foolish and doubtless wholly unnecessary proceeding, and certainly some record of such procedure would have been found ere this. The impressions were probably from rating stamps that were accidentally struck on the postage stamps, or possibly used purposely as cancellations.

The report of the Postmaster General for the 30th Sept. 1858, notes the fact that previous to 1854 all newspapers were rated at ½d. each, but in that year were granted free transmission. Concerning the new regulations it continues:—

The same report states:—"The Department has, from 1st. January, 1859, put in operation an arrangement for the conveyance of Parcel Packets between any two Post Offices in Canada with the ordinary mails." The charge was fixed at 1s. 3d. per pound with a maximum weight of two pounds, and prepayment was enforced.

In the Department accounts we find the following:—

which was simply a printing bill. The last payment for the pence issue of stamps appears in the report for 30th Sept., 1859, and is for the deliveries during the nine months from 30th. Sept. 1858 to 30th June, 1859, when the pence stamps were retired. The charge is given in decimal currency:—

The report for 1858 gives an interesting table showing the growth of the postal business by decades for the thirty years previous. The remarkable increase during the last period, within which the Province assumed control and the use of stamps was introduced, is to be noted:—

The year 1859 brings us to the end of the pence issues, but before leaving them there is still one more question to consider, that of the perforated varieties, which will form the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV

THE PERFORATED PENCE ISSUES

For further proof of the incorrectness of this theory we think the following fact speaks for itself. Appended to each Postmaster General's Report are various tables of expenditures. One of these statements is headed:—

"Sums paid in discharge of Tradesmen's Bills," and in it are found the amounts paid to various parties named for all kinds of supplies furnished the Department. This is where the payments to the engravers of the stamps appear, as well as items for cancelling stamps, post-marks, etc. Now a careful examination of all items for the years 1857, 1858 and 1859 fails to disclose any payment either for purchase of a perforating machine or for having the stamps perforated by outside parties. This may be "negative evidence" but we feel that it has its due weight.

Nevertheless, we find at least two other perforations on stamps of this issue besides the regulation gauge 12, which has made it appear to some that the Department might have experimented with means of separation before settling definitely on the type adopted. The stamp operated upon was the 3d., probably as being the most commonly employed value, which would naturally be the case were the perforations the efforts of private parties. The first "irregular" perforation was listed by Major Evans[60] as gauging 13, and the London Society's work lists it as well, probably following the earlier catalog. But Messrs. Corwin and King state:[61]—"This perforation is totally unknown in America, and we doubt its existence." Neither the Pack nor the Worthington collection contains a copy and we think it can be passed by.

The next perforation is of gauge 14, and this is well known though of extreme rarity. Messrs. Corwin and King did not know of over twenty specimens in 1891. We are fortunate in being able to illustrate a fine used pair on piece of cover from the Pack collection as No. 128 on Plate XIII. Most unfortunately, however, as will be noted, some vandal cut the cover, though perhaps unwittingly, just so as to destroy most of the postmark and thus lose forever the date and place of mailing. Messrs. Corwin and King state:[62]—

In another part of the article just quoted is the following:[63]—

From all the foregoing we can seem to make but one deduction for the 3d. perforated 14 and that is—unofficial. The dated cover, if 1859, would be but a month before the issue of the decimal stamps, and the regular "perf. 12" stamps were plentifully supplied at that time. It would therefore seem that the date must have been 1857, as suggested, which would have been well ahead of the appearance of the "perf. 12" issues as we shall see later. Then the fact that the manufacturers cannot be held responsible for this perforation, and the Department accounts furnish no item of expenditure directly traceable to such work, make it seem wholly probable that it was done by private parties for their own or customers' convenience.

The "curious perforation" alluded to as just discovered was announced by the Scott Stamp & Coin Co. as follows:[64]—

With regard to the deductions given, we think that what we have already presented concerning the unofficial character of the gauge 14 perforation applies with even more force in the present instance, and we unhesitatingly put these two curios in the "privately perforated" class.

Messrs. Corwin and King give further details as follows:[65]—

To return to the general subject, Mr. Donald A. King in his own article says:[66]—

The stamps in issue from the time of the announcement of perforation in the Report of 1857, to the appearance of the decimal stamps in 1859, were the ½d., 3d., 6d., 7½d., and 10d. values, but only the first three appeared with perforations. The first supply of the 10d. stamp, as we know, was received in January 1855, and was naturally unperforated. The first and only supply of the 7½d. stamp was received probably in the second quarter of 1857, and these were all unperforated. The first supply of the ½d. stamp was doubtless delivered about midsummer of 1857, and these were evidently all unperforated. The other supplies received in the fiscal year of 1857 were 300,000 of the 3d. in September 1856, and the same number again in March 1857, together with the 50,078 of the 6d.[67] Evidently these were still in the unperforated class, as they were delivered before either the 7½d. or ½d. supplies. We must therefore look to the supplies delivered after the 30th September, 1857, as a basis for reckoning up the perforated series. The values and quantities given in the stamp accounts (already quoted) are as follows:—

The first thing that confronts us here is a second supply of the 10d. stamp in this supposed "perforated period," over half of which was issued for sale, and yet the 10d. stamp is practically unknown in a perforated condition! We say practically, because the London Society's work[68] remarks:—"The Seven Pence Halfpenny, green, and Ten Pence, blue, perforated, exist in the collection of a well known Parisian collector. The authenticity, however, of the perforations appears to be doubtful." We think it is more than doubtful, as it is practically certain that neither value was ever issued in this condition. Messrs. Corwin and King state:[69]—"We agree with the Society in doubting the authenticity of the 7½d. and 10 pence, perforated, as these stamps, thus treated, have never been seen in America, nor can anything be ascertained from the makers of the Stamps or the Canadian Post Office Department concerning them." The last statement is hardly convincing, for neither party referred to can give any more information concerning the other three values that we know were issued. We can heartily subscribe to the next remark, however:—"We have no hesitation in pronouncing them impostors."

The date usually assigned to the appearance of the perforated stamps is January 1858. The London Society gave simply "1857," which is apparently set down merely because they have just quoted the announcement from the Postmaster General's Report for that year. Evans and Moens, in their catalogs, both name the date as November 1858. Unfortunately no more authoritative statement has been found, except that in Messrs. Corwin and King's article[70] they say "Mr. Hooper positively states that it took place in January, 1858." Mr. John R. Hooper was at that time [1890] connected with the Canadian Post Office Department at Ottawa and took pains to look up much information for the above-mentioned gentlemen. His reasons for the "positive statement" are not given, and inasmuch as he is quoted elsewhere as saying that "the records of the Post Office Department are silent as to where this perforation was performed and by whom,"[71] and also seems a little uncertain in some other details, we feel that further confirmation is needed.

In our table above we have given the supplies received after the 30th September, 1857, and deducted the remainders so as to have the actual number issued. The 10d. has already proved a stumbling block, for it was not perforated at all! Next we find the 6d. to the number of 150,000, when the total issue, including the laid paper, was but 400,000; yet the catalog value of the imperforates is some $6 for each variety, and of the perforated stamp at least $30! Can anyone doubt that all these 150,000 6d. stamps were not perforated? In the case of the 3d. we have one and a third millions to compare with a total issue of three and a half millions—about a third in the supposed perforated class. Yet the catalog value of the latter is $2.50 against 36 cents for the wove paper imperforate alone. With the ½d. stamp there are two millions against a total of three and a third millions, or about two to one in favor of the supposed perforated stamps, yet the latter are double the catalog price of the former! The only conclusion to be drawn from these regularly appearing inconsistencies in each value is that all the supplies after 30th September, 1857 were not perforated, as the 10d. stamp very glaringly intimates!

If this be so, is it not possible that the order to perforate new supplies was given to the manufacturers much later than has hitherto been thought to be the case? It hardly seems likely that this improvement would be ordered for a few supplies and then dropped, only to reappear a year and a half later as a permanent feature of the new set. Once adopted it was more than likely to be retained.

Let us see, then, just for curiosity's sake, what the supplies of the last six months of issue yield us for data. For the ½d. we find 850,000, roughly, with 60,000 remainders. Call it 800,000 issued which, if perforated, would be a quarter of the total issue of ½d. stamps, or a ratio to the imperforates of one to three. This is not so far away from the catalog ratio of two to one (inversely, of course) in the value of the perforated stamps. With the 3d. stamp we have 450,000, roughly, with 20,000 remainders, say 430,000 issued. Of a total issue of 3,500,000 this represents one-eighth, or a ratio of one to seven. The inverse ratio of seven to one for catalog value comes pretty close when we compare $2.50 with 36 cents! In the case of the 6d. there are 70,000 less 17,500 remainders, or 52,500. This is approximately one-eighth the total issue of 400,000, or again a ratio of one to seven. The inverse ratio of seven to one for a catalog value would make the perforated stamp list $42 with the imperforate at $6. But both laid and wove paper 6d. stamps list at approximately $6, whereas if all had been issued on but one variety of paper we might find perhaps a single list price of say $4. With this as a basis, the catalog value of $30 for the perforated 6d. is in as close agreement with our supposition as are the others. And, best of all, the second supply of the 10d. stamp is disposed of without any difficulty whatever under this hypothesis!

It may be argued that reasoning thus from catalog prices is too uncertain to prove of value. Granted in many cases. But here is an issue from fifty to sixty years old; the stamps were regularly used in increasing numbers during their years of issue; they have always been popular and eagerly collected, so that the stock in existence has been pretty well handled and pretty well distributed. Under these conditions the catalog prices should by this time reflect fairly accurately the relative rarity of the main varieties of each stamp at least; and it is this relative rarity that we are after in order to approximate the original supplies of the main varieties. The result is certainly of more than mere interest, the agreement being such that we are tempted to lay down the following propositions in regard to the perforated stamps for further proof or disproof:—

First. The regular perforation (gauge 12) was done by the manufacturers and applied to the last requisitions previous to the change to decimal stamps.

Second. The date of the supposed issue of the perforated stamps should be changed from January 1858, to November 1858 or January 1859.

Third. The quantities of perforated stamps issued are placed approximately at:—½d., 789,440; 3d., 428,200; 6d., 52,422.

In further support of the above postulates, we must say that every cover bearing any one of the three perforated stamps which we have been able to get a satisfactory date from has been postmarked in 1859! Not one has yet been seen which bore a date in 1858 even, and one 6d. from the Seybold collection, which was dated at Brantford, Dec. 29, 1857, turned out to be bad. Of course perforated pence stamps are hard to find on original covers, but it is curious that so far not one has upset the theory we have laid down.

There is one point left which perhaps needs some attention. The London Society's work lists a 6d. on laid paper, perforated 12, and Mr. King has followed by including it in his reference list. This would imply that the Canadian Government had perforated its stock on hand, in which might be a few remainders of the early laid paper issue, and naturally would go far toward confirming that view of the origin of the perforated series. But this stamp seems to be an unknown quantity, almost as much so as the 3d. "perforated 13" of Major Evans' Catalogue. Mr. Pack says:[72]—"I have never heard of the 6d. perforated, on laid paper. It is catalogued in the Society's publication, but a copy, so far as I can learn, has never been seen in Canada or in the United States."

We have been interested to track this stamp, and have apparently found the original located in the Tapling collection, now housed at the British Museum. In a catalog of the Canadian portion of this collection by Gordon Smith,[73] we find two unused copies listed on laid paper, one marked "perf. 12" and the other "forged perf." The sequel is found in the American Journal of Philately for 1891[74] in the following note:—