Strangely enough, he could learn nothing about the seed of the lucerne or alfalfa plant, one of the oldest of forage plants, for which Bartram wrote. Later, he sends Bartram a small box of upland rice, brought from Cochin China, and also a few seeds of the Chinese tallow tree. Another particular friend of Franklin was John Hughes of Philadelphia. This is the Hughes, out of whose debt as a correspondent Franklin, when in England, found it impossible to keep. He was a man of considerable political importance, for he served on the Committee of the Assembly, which was charged with the expenditure of the L60,000 appropriated by the Assembly, after Braddock's defeat, mainly for the defence of the Province, and on the Committee of the Assembly, which audited Franklin's accounts after his return from England in 1762; and was also one of the delegates appointed by the Assembly to confer with Teedyuscung, the King of the Delawares, at Easton in 1756. Even when Franklin, his party associate, was defeated as a candidate for re-election to the Assembly in 1764, Hughes contrived to clamber back into his own seat. The departure for England of Franklin, shortly after this election, was the signal for the most venomous of all the attacks made upon him by the class of writers which he happily termed "bug-writers"; that is, writers, to use his words, who resemble "those little dirty stinking insects, that attack us only in the dark, disturb our Repose, molesting and wounding us, while our Sweat and Blood are contributing to their Subsistence." But the friendship of Hughes was equal to the emergency. Incensed at the outrageous nature of the attack, he published a card over his signature, in which he promised that, if Chief Justice Allen, or any gentleman of character, would undertake to justify the charges against Franklin, he would pay L10 to the Hospital for every one of these charges that was established; provided that the person, who made them, would pay L5 for every false accusation against Franklin that he disproved. The assailants endeavored to turn Hughes' challenge into ridicule by an anonymous reply, but Hughes rejoined with a counter-reply above his own signature, in which, according to William Franklin, he lashed them very severely for their baseness. This brought on a newspaper controversy, which did not end, until Chief Justice Allen, who was drawn into its vortex, was enraged to find that it had cost him L25. Later, the recommendation of Hughes by Franklin, as the Stamp Distributor for Pennsylvania and the Counties of New Castle, Kent and Sussex, gave the worst shock to the popularity of the latter that it ever received. The fierce heat that colonial resentment kindled under the hateful office proved too much for even such a resolute incumbent as Hughes, but he was not long in finding a compensation in the somewhat lower temperature of the office of Collector of Customs for the Colonies, which he held until his death.