Franklin at age 62.............................

The year is 1768.............. 

Above all, as he admitted in some letters, his views were in flux and he was still trying to make up his mind. . . .

     That was the crux of Franklin's dilemma.  He had rendered himself suspect, he noted in a letter to a friend, "in England of being too much of an American, and in America of being too much of an Englishman."  With his dreams for a harmonious and growing British Empire, he still hoped he could be both.  "Being born and bred in one of the countries and having lived long and made many agreeable connections in the other, I wish all prosperity to both," he proclaimed.  Thus, he was intrigued, even hopeful, about securing a government job in which he could try to hold the two parts of the empire together.

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life,