The committee recommended that a postmaster-general be appointed for the UNITED STATES, who should hold his office at Philadelphia, and be allowed a salary of one thousand dollars for himself, and three hundred and forty dollars per annum for a secretary and controller, “with power to appoint such and so many deputies as to him may seem proper and necessary;” that a line of posts should be appointed, under the direction of the postmaster-general, from Falmouth, in New England, to Savannah, in Georgia, “with as many cross-posts as he shall think fit; that the allowance of the deputies in lieu of salary and all contingent expenses shall be twenty per cent. on the sums they collect and pay into the general post-office, annually, when the whole is under, or not exceeding, one thousand dollars, and ten per cent. for all sums above that amount a year; that the several departments account quarterly with the general post-office, and the postmaster-general annually with the Continental treasurers, when he shall pay into the receipt of the said treasurers the profits of the post-office, and if the necessary expenses of this establishment should exceed the produce of it, the deficiency shall be made good by the United Colonies, and paid to the postmaster-general by the Continental treasurers.” This plan, and resolutions accompanying it, were submitted to Congress, who adopted it, and, taking into consideration the interest Franklin had always taken in the department, and also his summary dismissal under the “British dynasty,” unanimously elected Benjamin Franklin, Esq., postmaster-general for one year, and until another Congress assembled. Eighteen months had passed since his dismissal, when he now found himself reinstated in office with higher rank and augmented authority. Nay, more: he was postmaster-general under a new ruling power,—a power that was uprising like the glorious sun from the mists and the gloom of a long, dreary night of wrong and oppression. It was now the dawn of a new era in the history of men and of nations. _It was the dawn of freedom!_ The people made a law; and as there cannot be rational freedom where there are arbitrary restraints, they adopted Cicero’s maxim, and proclaimed liberty as the law of the land:— “_Libertas est potestas faciendi id quod jure liceat._” One of the strongest tests by which the progressive prosperity of a country may be ascertained is that of its postal department. It forms a chain which links together all private and public interests; it links state to state, countries to countries, nations to nations. It is the alphabet of the world! Benjamin Franklin appointed Richard Bache, his son-in-law, deputy postmaster. They established mail-riders to carry the mails, and stationed them at distances of twenty-five miles, to deliver from one to the other and return to their starting-places: they travelled night and day, and were men selected for their honesty and sobriety.