The people of Philadelphia admired Benjamin Franklin more and more. At the age of thirty he was chosen clerk of the Assembly of Pennsylvania, and afterward was elected a lawmaker in the Assembly. Every year for ten years his neighbors elected him to help make the laws of the colony. [Sidenote: =Deputy postmaster-general=] In a few years Franklin was made deputy postmaster-general for all the colonies by the king. He surprised the people by declaring that the mail should be carried from Philadelphia to Boston every week! He was postmaster-general for more than twenty years. [Illustration: MILESTONE, LYME, CONN. _This milestone, still standing at Lyme, marks the distance on a road surveyed by Franklin_] [Sidenote: =Franklin plans a union of the colonies=] In 1754 Franklin was sent by the colony of Pennsylvania to Albany, New York, to meet men from other colonies to make a treaty with the Iroquois, and to plan a union of the Thirteen Colonies. While George Washington was still a surveyor, before Wolfe captured Quebec, and when Patrick Henry was yet a boy, Franklin wrote out a plan of union which pointed the way toward that greater Union, the United States of America. [Sidenote: =Fame begins to come=] Franklin was now becoming famous outside of Pennsylvania. Yale College honored him with the degree of Master of Arts. The old University of Cambridge, England, gave him the same degree. All the wise men in England and France were excited by news of an experiment made by Benjamin Franklin. He had made electricity by using glass tubes, and he had seen the lightning flash in the storm cloud. He decided to prove, if he could, that lightning and electricity are the same. No one had yet done this. [Sidenote: =Proves that lightning and electricity are the same=] He made a kite out of silk, to which he fastened a small iron rod. Then he tied a hempen string to the kite and the rod. To the lower end of the string he tied a silken cord to protect his hand from the electricity. On the string he tied a key. One day when the storm clouds came rolling up, Franklin sent his kite high up among them, while he waited. Soon the loose fibers on the hempen string moved. Franklin placed his knuckles close to the key, and sparks came flying at his hand. [Sidenote: =More honors=] When the news of this experiment was published some very wise men smiled; others said it was a trick. The great universities of Oxford and Edinburgh, however, gave him the doctor's degree, and societies of wise men in England, France, and Spain elected him a member. He was now the most famous American. [Sidenote: =Sent to England to defend the colonies=] =79. Franklin's Part in the Revolution.= Already we have seen that England and her colonies were beginning to quarrel. What wiser man could be sent to England to defend the colonies by tongue and pen than Benjamin Franklin? He made friends for America among the great men of England.