America and the resulting efforts at taxation were not least among the sparks which set off the Revolution. 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.