This resolution marks the beginning of Franklin’s most troubled agency. The root of trouble was the inability of the two chambers of the General Court, the Council and the House of Representatives, to agree on a single agent. For years, in consequence, each had its own, William Bollan for the Council and Dennys DeBerdt for the House, and the latter’s position was questionable: Lord Hillsborough had already expressed doubt of his status, on the ground that the House had appointed him only to oppose the Stamp Act.5 When he died in the summer of 1770 a single provincial agent, named by an act of the legislature and the governor as Franklin had been named in Georgia, was as remote a prospect as ever. Some members of the House saw no point in having an agent at all, to lobby fruitlessly against the measures of an obdurate Parliament. The majority wished to continue, but was divided over who the agent should be. The faction led by James Otis and Samuel Adams, after rejecting several candidates as too moderate, came up finally with the name of Arthur Lee. He was a Virginia-born and Scottish-trained physician, then studying law in London, who had first achieved prominence by his letters to the press against the Stamp Act, and in the fall of 1769 had begun a series of articles in London papers, signed Junius Americanus, which were effective propaganda against the Townshend Acts.

Franklin was also in the running, and the contest narrowed to one between him and Lee, the two chief American propagandists in London. Some attacked Franklin for having too many agencies already, others for being the father of a colonial governor and hence too friendly to officialdom. But his reputation was enhanced by his recent answers to Strahan’s queries, which were circulated by Samuel Cooper;6 and Franklin was eventually chosen by a considerable majority. As a sop to the opposition, however, Lee was named as his alternate to serve in the event of his absence or death.7 This subordination bitterly antagonized the younger man, who was soon accusing Franklin of being Hillsborough’s tool.8 The action of the House, in short, first yoked together two colleagues who were not designed for that yoke. They bore it for a decade, as agents first for Massachusetts and then for the infant United States, and it sorely galled them both.