d this was adverse to the Pennsylvania Assembly. The
Privy Council, however, to whom the persistent agent appealed, composed
of the great dignitaries of the realm, decided that the proprietary
estates of the Penns should contribute their proportion of the public
revenue. On this decision, Franklin, feeling that he had accomplished
all that was possible, returned home in 1762, little more than a year
after the accession of George III. Through the kindness of Lord Bute,
the king's favorite, Franklin also secured the appointment of his son to
the government of New Jersey. This appointment created some scandal, and
the Penns rolled up their eyes, not at the nepotism of Franklin, but
because he had procured the advancement of his illegitimate son.

Franklin, during his absence of more than five years, had been regularly
re-elected a member of the Assembly, and he was received on his return
with every possible public and private attention. He had hoped now for
leisure to pursue his scientific investigations, and had accordingly
taken a new and larger house. But before long new political troubles
arose between the governor of Pennsylvania and the legislature, and what
was still more ominous, troubles in New England respecting the taxation
of the Colonies by the British government, at the head of which was
Grenville, an able man but not far-sighted, who in March, 1764,
announced his intention of introducing into Parliament the bill known as
the Stamp Act.

To this famous bill there was not great opposition, since a large
majority of the House of Commons believed in the right of taxing the
Colonies. Lord Camden, a great lawyer, took different views. Burke and
Pitt admitted the right of taxation, but thought its enforcement
inexpedient, as likely to alienate the Colonies and make them enemies
instead of loyal subjects.

At this crisis appeared in America a group of orators who at once
aroused and intensified the prevailing discontents by their inflammatory
speeches, in much the same manner that Wendell Phillips and Wm. Lloyd
Garrison, seventy years later, aroused public sentiment in reference to
slavery. James Otis, the lawyer from Barnstable on the shores of Cape
Cod, who had opposed the Writs of Assistance, "led the van of these
patriots,--an impassioned orator, incapable of cold calculation, now
foaming with rage, and then desponding, not steadfast in conduct, yet by
flashes of sagacity lighting the people along their perilo