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In 1750 Franklin was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, in which he served until 1764. He was appointed deputy postmaster general for the colonies in 1753; in that job he improved postal service between Philadelphia and New York and instituted a new accounting system to prevent local postmasters from pocketing postal money. As the delegate from Pennsylvania, Franklin attended a 1754 congress that met at Albany for the purpose of uniting the colonies in the face of the threatened French and Indian War (1754-1763). Realizing the need for a common defense, he proposed the Albany Plan, a strategy for colonial cooperation in many ways prophetic of the 1787 United States Constitution. But the plan was too far in advance of public thinking to win ratification. In later years Franklin believed that the adoption of this plan would have prevented the American Revolution.

When the French and Indian War broke out, Franklin acquired horses, wagons, and supplies for British commander General Edward Braddock by pledging his own credit to the Pennsylvania farmers, who thereupon furnished the necessary equipment. The proprietors of Pennsylvania Colony, descendants of Quaker leader William Penn, opposed war on religious grounds and refused to allow their landholdings to be taxed to pay for the war. (As a proprietary colony, Pennsylvania was governed by proprietors, who owned most of the unsettled land.) In 1757, the Pennsylvania Assembly sent Franklin to England to petition the king for the right to tax proprietary lands.

After completing his mission, Franklin remained in England for five years as the chief representative of the American colonies. During this period he did his best to enlighten the British government on colonial conditions. He was a popular figure in England and made friends with many prominent people, including chemist and clergyman Joseph Priestley, philosopher and historian David Hume, and philosopher and economist Adam Smith.

Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1762, where he remained until 1764, when he was once again dispatched to England as the colonial agent of Pennsylvania. This time his mission was to petition King George III to oust Pennsylvania’s hereditary proprietors and make Pennsylvania a royal colony. In London, Franklin actively opposed passage of the Stamp Act, which required payment of a tax on newspapers, legal documents, contracts, and pamphlets. Franklin called the Stamp Act the “mother of mischief,” but even he failed to anticipate the full fury of the colonies’ reaction to it. His popularity at home suffered when it was learned that Franklin had helped a friend obtain a post as a stamp agent in America. Although the British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in 1766, it soon introduced new plans for taxing the colonies. Franklin continued his patient and sensible attempts to conciliate the colonies and the British home government; Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia named him their colonial agent in England. However, despite Franklin’s efforts, troubles with Britain continued to mount.

In 1774 a scandal broke concerning letters that Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts had written urging the English government to adopt sterner measures toward the colonists. The letters had come into Franklin’s hands from a member of the British Parliament. Shocked by what he considered Hutchinson’s treason to the colony, Franklin revealed the contents of the letters to a friend in Massachusetts. He warned against having them published, but the letters found their way into print. Through Franklin, Massachusetts presented a petition to the British government asking that Hutchinson be removed from his post as governor, and a hearing was held on the matter. At the hearing Franklin was accused of having stolen the letters and was insulted as a man without honor. He lost his job as deputy postmaster general for the colonies as a result of the scandal.

In 1775, fearing a break between the colonies and Britain, Franklin sailed for America. Before leaving London, he encouraged writer Thomas Paine to immigrate to America. Franklin reached Philadelphia on May 5, 1775, after an absence of 11 years, to find that the opening engagements of the Revolution—the battles of Lexington and Concord—had already been fought.