Thinking they did the obscure Pennsylvanians honour enough to govern them by _proxy_, they washed their hands of the poor colony government, and sent them over deputies. These, hirelings, to augment their salaries, soon commenced a course of oppressions on the people, whom they treated with great insolence. It were too great an honour to those wretches to set the people of the present day to reading their insolent messages to the legislature. They were always, however, very properly chastised by Dr. Franklin; sometimes in the columns of his own popular newspaper, and sometimes in the assembly. Not, indeed, by long and eloquent orations, for which he either had no talent, or declined it, preferring the pithy and pungent _anecdote_ or _story_, which was always so admirably appropriate, and withal so keen in wit and truth, that like a flash from his own lightning rods, it never failed to demolish the fairest fabric of sophistry, and cause even its greatest admirers to blush that they had been so fascinated by its false glare. In 1756, he was appointed deputy post-master general for the British colonies. It is asserted that in _his_ hands, the post-office in America yielded annually thrice as much as did that of Ireland. An extraordinary proof of our passion for reading and writing beyond the Irish. Perhaps it was owing to this that we saved our liberties, while they lost theirs. Several of the middle colonies suffering much at this time from Indian depredations on their frontiers, it was agreed among them to send commissioners to Albany to devise means for mutual defence. Dr. Franklin, commissioner on the part of Pennsylvania, had the honour to draw up a plan, which was thought excellent. Knowing the colonists to be the best marksmen in the world, and supposing it infinitely safer that the defence of their own firesides should be entrusted to them than to British hirelings, he had with his usual sagacity recommended that muskets and powder should be put into their hands. But when his plan was presented to the KING and COUNCIL for ratification, it was indignantly rejected. It was thought by some that hardly could Satan and his black janisaries have been more seriously offended, had a cargo of Bibles and hymn books been recommended for their pandemonium.