the Quaker and proprietary province of
Pennsylvania. Franklin opposed Shirley's suggestion of a general tax to
be levied on the colonies by Parliament, on the ground of no taxation
without representation, but used all his arts to bring the Quaker
Assembly to vote money for defense, and succeeded. When General Braddock
arrived in Virginia Franklin was sent by the Assembly to confer with him
in the hope of allaying any prejudice against Quakers that the general
might have conceived. If that blustering and dull-witted soldier had any
such prejudice, it melted away when the envoy of the Quakers promised to
procure wagons for the army. The story of Braddock's disaster does not
belong here, but Franklin formed a shrewd estimate of the man which
proved accurate. His account of Braddock's opinion of the colonial
militia is given in a sentence: "He smil'd at my ignorance, and reply'd,
'These savages may, indeed, be a formidable enemy to your raw American
militia, but upon the King's regular and disciplin'd troops, sir, it is
impossible they should make any impression.'" After Braddock's defeat
the Pennsylvania Assembly voted more money for defense, and the
unmilitary Franklin was placed in command of the frontier with full
power. He built forts, as he had planned, and incidentally learned much
of the beliefs of a group of settlers in the back country, the "Unitas
Fratrum," better known as the Moravians.

The death struggle between English and French in America served only to
intensify a lesser conflict that was being waged between the Assembly
and the proprietors of Pennsylvania; and the Assembly determined to
send Franklin to London to seek judgment against the proprietors and to
request the King to take away from them the government of Pennsylvania.
Franklin, accompanied by his son William, reached London in July, 1757,
and from this time on his life was to be closely linked with Europe. He
returned to America six years later and made a trip of sixteen hundred
miles inspecting postal affairs, but in 1764 he was again sent to
England to renew the petition for a royal government for Pennsylvania,
which had not yet been granted. Presently that petition was made
obsolete by the Stamp Act, and Franklin became the representative of the
American colonies against King and Parliament.

Franklin did his best to avert the Revolution. He made many friends in
England, wrote pamphlets and articles, told comical stories and fables
where th