aints and petitions.
If these are deemed affronts, and the messengers punished as
offenders, who will henceforth send petitions? and who will
deliver them?"

The speech of Wedderburn gave great delight to all the Tory party. It
was derisively said, "that the lords of the council, went to their
chamber, as to a bull-baiting, and hounded on the Solicitor General
with loud applause and laughter." Mr. Fox, writing of the assault
said, "All men tossed up their hats and clapped their hands, in
boundless delight."

When the tidings of the affair reached America, it added intensity to
the animosity, then rapidly increasing, against the British
government. The dismissal of Franklin from the post-office, was deemed
equivalent to the seizure, by the crown, of that important branch of
the government. None but the creatures of the Ministry were to be
postmasters. Consequently patriotic Americans could no longer entrust
their letters to the mail. Private arrangements were immediately made
for the conveyance of letters; and with so much efficiency, that the
general office, which had heretofore contributed fifteen thousand
dollars annually to the public treasury, never after paid into it one
farthing.[24]

[Footnote 24: It may be worthy of record, that Wedderburn became the
hero of the clubs and the favorite of the Tory party. Wealth and
honors were lavished upon him. He rose to the dignity of an earl and
lord chancellor, and yet we do not find, in any of the annals of those
days, that he is spoken of otherwise than as a shallow, unprincipled
man. When his death, after a few hours' illness, was announced to the
king, he scornfully said, "He has not left a worse man behind him."]

The spirit of the Tories may be inferred from that of one of the most
applauded and influential of their leaders. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who
wrote the notorious "Taxation no Tyranny," said,

"The Americans are a race of convicts. They ought to be thankful for
any thing we can give them. I am willing to love all mankind except
an American." Boswell in quoting one of his insane tirades writes,
"His inflammable corruption, bursting into horrid fire, he breathed
out threatenings and slaughter, calling them rascals, robbers,
pirates, and exclaiming that he would burn and destroy them."

It was a day of vicious indulgence, of dissipation in every form, when
it was fashionable to be godless, and to sneer at all the restraints
of the Christian reli