"In England Franklin's conduct was regarded with the utmost severity. For the purpose of ruining honorable officials it was said, their most confidential letters, written years before to a private member of Parliament, who had at that time no connection with Government, had been deliberately stolen; although the original thief was undiscovered, the full weight of the guilt and dishonor rested upon Franklin. He was perfectly aware that the letters had been written in the strictest confidence, that they had been dishonestly obtained without the knowledge of the person who received them, or the person who wrote them, and that their exposure would be a deadly injury to the writers. Under these circumstances he sent them to a small group of politicians whom he knew to be the bitterest enemies of the Governor, and one result was a duel in which the brother of the man whose private papers had been stolen, was nearly killed. Any man of high and sensitive honor, it was said, would sooner have put his hand into the fire than have been concerned in such a transaction."[132] [132] Lecky's Am. Rev., pp. 149, 150. When the petition for the removal of Hutchinson and Oliver arrived the Government referred it to the Committee of the Privy Council that the allegations might be publicly examined with counsel on either side. The case exerted an intense interest which had been rarely paralleled. No less than thirty-five Privy Councillors attended; among the distinguished strangers who crowded the Bar were Burke, Priestley and Jeremy Bentham, Dunning and Lee, who spoke for the petitioners; they appear to have made no impression; while on the other side Wedderburn, the Solicitor-General, made one of his most brilliant but most virulent speeches, which was received with boundless applause.