As a practical printer Franklin was reported to have had no superiors. As a journalist he exerted an influence not only unrivaled in his day, but more potent, on this continent at least, than either of his sovereigns or their parliaments. Franklin was the chief founder of the Philadelphia Library in 1731. The organization of a police and later of the militia for Philadelphia; of companies for extinguishing fires; making the sweeping and paving of the streets a municipal function, and establishment of an academy which has matured into the now famous University of Pennsylvania, were among the conspicuous reforms which he planted and watered in the columns of the Gazette. In 1736 he became clerk of the Provincial Assembly, and the following year was postmaster of Philadelphia. He was the founder of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia in 1744, and six years later was elected to the Provincial Assembly. In 1753 Franklin was appointed deputy postmaster for the English-American colonies. In 1754 he was a delegate to the Colonial Congress at Albany, in which he prepared a plan of union for the colonies, which was the basis of the Articles of Confederation adopted by Congress more than twenty years afterward. Franklin graduated from journalism into diplomacy as naturally as winter glides into spring. The question of taxing the Penn Proprietary estates for the defense of the Province from the French and Indians had assumed such an acute stage in 1757 that the Assembly decided to petition the King upon the subject, and selected Franklin to visit London and present their petition. The next forty-one years of his life were virtually spent in the diplomatic service. Franklin was five years absent on this first mission. Every interest in London was against him. He finally obtained a compromise, and for his success the Penns and their partisans never forgave him, and his fellow Colonists never forgot him. Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1762, but not to remain. The question of taxing the Colonies without representation was soon thrust upon them in the shape of a stamp duty, and Franklin was sent out again to urge its repeal. He reached London in November, 1764, where he remained the next eleven years, until it became apparent that there would never be a change during the reign of George III. Satisfied that his usefulness was at an end, he sailed for Philadelphia March 21, 1775, and on the morning of his arrival was elected by the Assembly of Pennsylvania a delegate to Continental Congress. Franklin served on ten committees in this Congress. He was one of five who drew up the Declaration of Independence, July, 1776, and in September following was chosen unanimously as one of the three commissioners to be sent to solicit for the infant Republic the aid of France and the sympathies of Continental Europe.