From disobedience Palmer proceeded to defiance. We will give instances. The proprietors of the mail-coach between Carlisle and Portpatrick had demanded payment at the rate of 2d. a mile, and Palmer had agreed to the demand. This was just double the usual rate, and the postmasters-general, fearing that if given on one road it could not be refused on another, determined, before signing the warrant presented for payment, to obtain Treasury authority. Palmer, knowing that delay would thus be caused, protested that no such authority was necessary, and, in order to enforce his protest, stopped four mail-coaches, for which was being paid more than the usual allowance of 1d. a mile, namely, the coach to Falmouth, the coach to Bristol, the coach to Plymouth, and the coach to Portsmouth--coolly informing the postmasters-general that he had done so "under the idea that appears to influence their Lordships, that paying a higher rate to the proprietors on one road might induce others to make a similar demand." He next inquired whether the postmasters-general were to be understood as preferring a cart to the mail-coach, even though a cart should be the more expensive of the two. As nothing had been said about a cart, the postmasters-general remarked that this could only be meant for insult. Insult! rejoined Palmer, he was as little capable of offering an insult as he was of putting up with one; and then he proceeded to charge the postmasters-general with the grossest partiality. The postmasters-general had increased the salary of the postmaster of Tewkesbury beyond what Palmer conceived to be necessary. He denounced the transaction as extraordinary and ill advised, and, while himself professing to believe that it proceeded only from motives of benevolence, expressed his conviction that others would regard it as "a job." Smuggled goods had been found in the mail-box of the Dover coach; and coach, horses, and harness had, in consequence, been seized by the Commissioners of Customs. The same man who, in order to force a decision, had stopped four mail-coaches in a single morning, now rated the postmasters-general soundly because they did not at once and without inquiry take steps to get the Commissioners' proceedings reversed. "The comptroller-general," wrote Palmer on another occasion, "has informed their Lordships of his motives for not answering several of the postmaster-generals' minutes, which he trusts cannot but be satisfactory to them. The same reasons will prevent him from answering any others their Lordships may send but such as appear to him absolutely necessary."