Franklin's _Three Letters to Governor Shirley_ (1754), while expressing no credulous views of the wisdom of the people, maintained in one breath that the colonists were loyal to the Constitution and Crown as ever colonists were and in another that "it is supposed an undoubted right of Englishmen, not to be taxed but by their own consent given through their representatives."[i-265] (Shirley had apparently written that the Council in the Albany Plan should be appointed by England, and not by the colonial assemblies.) Franklin held for the colonists' right to English civil liberty and the right to enjoy the Constitution. Here again we find a factor later magnified into one of the major causes of the Revolution.
In addition to being lethargic in the defense of the Pennsylvania borders, the proprietor refused "to be taxed except for a trifling Part of his Estate, the Quitrents, located unimprov'd Lands, Money at Interest, etc., etc., being exempted by Instructions to the Governor."[i-266] Thereupon Franklin turned from colonial affairs (which had indeed proved obstinate) to pressing local matters, when in 1757 he was appointed agent to go to London to demand that the proprietor submit his estates to be taxed. In the _Report of the Committee of Aggrievances of the Assembly of Pennsylvania_[i-267] (Feb. 22, 1757) it was charged that the proprietor had violated the royal charter and the colonists' civil rights as Englishmen, and had abrogated their natural rights, rights "inherent in every man, antecedent to all laws."[i-268] Later it was but a short step from provincial matters to colonial rights of revolution. In this _Report_ we see Franklin associated for the first time expressly with the throne-and-altar-defying concept of natural rights.
Although we have yet to review the evidence which shows that Franklin at one stage in his political career was an arch-imperialist, we need to digress to observe an intellectual factor which, if only fragmentarily expressed in his political thought during his activities in behalf of Pennsylvania liberties, was to become a momentous sanction when during the war he became a diplomat of revolution. From the Stoics, from Cicero, Grotius, Puffendorf, Burlamaqui, and as Rev. Jonathan Mayhew[i-269] observes, from Plato and Demosthenes, from Sidney, Milton, Hoadley, and Locke; in addition, from Gordon and Trenchard (see _Cato's Letters_ and _The Independent Whig_), Blackstone, Coke--from these and many others, the colonists derived a pattern of thought known as natural rights, dependent on natural law.[i-270] There is no better summary of natural rights than the Declaration of Independence; and of it John Adams remarked: "There is not an idea in it but what has been hackneyed in Congress for two years before."[i-271] Carl Becker pointedly observes: "Where Jefferson got his ideas is hardly so much a question as where he could have got away from them."[i-272] A characteristic summary of natural law may be found in Blackstone's _Commentaries_:[i-273]