Postal carriers could now deliver newspapers, Country Email List and the mail service between New York and Philadelphia was increased to three deliveries a week in summer and one in winter. Franklin set milestones at fixed distances along the main post Country Email List road that ran from northern New England to Savannah, Georgia, to enable the postmasters to compute postage. Crossroads connected some of the larger communities away from the Country Email List seacoast with the main road, but when Benjamin Franklin died, after also serving as postmaster general of the United States, there were still only 75 post offices in the entire country.
Defense Funding Raising funds for the Country Email List defense was always a grave problem in the colonies because the assemblies controlled Country Email List the purse-strings and released them with a grudging hand. When the British sent General Edward Braddock Country Email List to defend the colonies in the French and Indian War, Franklin personally guaranteed that the required funds from the Pennsylvania farmers would be repaid. The assembly refused to raise Country Email List a tax on the British peers who owned much of the land in Pennsylvania (the "Proprietary Faction") in order to pay those farmers for their contribution, and Franklin was outraged. In general, Franklin opposed Parliament levying taxes on the colonie.
Taxation without representation—but he used Country Email List all his influence to bring the Quaker Assembly to vote for money for the defense Country Email List of the colony. In January 1757, the Assembly sent Franklin to London to lobby the Proprietary faction to be more accommodating to the Assembly and, failing that, to take the issue to the British government. Franklin arrived in London in July 1757, and his life would be inextricably linked Country Email List with Europe from then on. He returned to America six years later and made a trip of 1,600 miles to inspect postal affairs, but in 1764 he was again sent to England to renew the petition for a royal government for Pennsylvania, which had not yet been granted.