The next morning, which was Sunday, Priestly breakfasted at Franklin's table. He represents him as saying that he could not have borne the insults heaped upon him by the privy council, but for the consciousness, that he had done only that which was right. On Monday morning Franklin received a laconic letter from the Postmaster General, informing him that the king had found it necessary to dismiss him from the office of deputy Postmaster General in America. This outrage, inflicted by the privy council of Great Britain, upon a friendly ambassador from her colonies, who had visited her court with the desire to promote union and harmony, was one of the most atrocious acts ever perpetrated by men above the rank of vagabonds in their drunken carousals. Franklin, in transmitting an account to Massachusetts, writes in a noble strain: "What I feel on my own account, is half lost in what I feel for the public. When I see that all petitions and complaints of grievances, are so odious to government, that even the mere pipe which conveys them, becomes obnoxious, I am at a loss to know how peace and union are to be maintained, and restored between the different parts of the empire. Grievances cannot be redressed, unless they are known. And they cannot be known, but through complaints 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]