armers, who then furnished him with the necessary equipment. The proprietors of Pennsylvania Colony, descendants of the Quaker leader William Penn, in conformity with their religious opposition to war, refused to allow their landholdings to be taxed for the prosecution of the war. So, in 1757, Franklin was sent to England as a representative of the Pennsylvania Assembly to petition the king for the right to levy taxes on proprietary lands. After completing his mission, he remained in England for five years as the chief representative of the American colonies. Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1762, where he remained until 1764, when he was once again dispatched to England as the agent of Pennsylvania. In 1766 he was interrogated before the House of Commons regarding the effects of the Stamp Act upon the colonies; his testimony was largely influential in securing the repeal of the act. Soon, however, new plans for taxing the colonies were introduced in Parliament, and Franklin became divided between his devotion to his native land and his loyalty as a subject of George III of Great Britain. Ultimately in 1775, he felt that his powers of conciliation were exhausted, and so he finally acknowledged the inevitability of war. Sailing for America after an absence of eleven years, he reached Philadelphia on May 5, 1775, to find that the beginning stages of the Revolution-the battles of Lexington and Concord-had already been fought. He was chosen a member of the Second Continental Congress, serving on ten of its committees, and was made postmaster general, an office he held for one year; he was the only one ever to operate the U.S. Postal Service at a profit. In 1775 Franklin traveled to Canada, in a vain effort to enlist the cooperation and support of Canada in the Revolution. When he returned, he became one of the committee of five chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence. He was also one of the signers of that historic do...
