Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1762, but not to remain. The question of taxing the Colonies without representation was soon thrust upon them in the shape of a stamp duty, and Franklin was sent out again to urge its repeal. He reached London in November, 1764, where he remained the next eleven years, until it became apparent that there would never be a change during the reign of George III.
Satisfied that his usefulness was at an end, he sailed for Philadelphia March 21, 1775, and on the morning of his arrival was elected by the Assembly of Pennsylvania a delegate to Continental Congress.
Franklin served on ten committees in this Congress. He was one of five who drew up the Declaration of Independence, July, 1776, and in September following was chosen unanimously as one of the three commissioners to be sent to solicit for the infant Republic the aid of France and the sympathies of Continental Europe.
Franklin had begun his investigations and experiments in electricity, by which he demonstrated its identity with lightning, as early as 1746. The publication of his account of these experiments procured his election as an honorary member of the Royal Society of London and his undisputed rank among the most eminent natural philosophers of his time.
He received the Copley gold medal and the degree of LL.D. from Oxford and Edinburgh in 1762. Harvard and Yale had previously conferred upon him the degree of master of arts.
When Franklin arrived in Paris, therefore, he was already a member of every important learned society in Europe.
The history of his mission and how Franklin succeeded in procuring financial aid from the French King, and finally a treaty of peace more favorable to his country than either England or France wished to concede, has been often told.
Franklin’s reputation grew with his success. More was published about him in the newspapers of the world than of any other man that ever lived.
Franklin landed in Philadelphia on September 13, 1785, on the same wharf on which sixty-two years before he had stepped, a friendless and virtually penniless runaway apprentice of seventeen.
Though now in his seventy-ninth year and a victim of infirmities, he had hardly unpacked his trunks when he was chosen a member of the Municipal Council of Philadelphia and its chairman. Shortly after he was elected President of Pennsylvania, his own vote only lacking to make the vote unanimous.