in 1764 a petition to this effect passed the Assembly, he resigned the Speakership, rather than as Speaker sign the petition to the Crown for the change and Franklin was chosen Speaker in his place and signed the petition. Franklin could see no remedy for the trouble but in the substitution of a Royal Government in the place of one by a privileged Family; but not many years elapsed before he himself acknowledged that there was as little dependence to be placed upon the so called paternal government of a King. It was in this contest that we find Franklin's mind developing those great principles which he eventually had to apply to our national affairs and which became in the logic of events the unanswerable argument for our Independence, while such men as Norris and his son-in-law John Dickinson, alike pure and patriotic as was Franklin, stopped short of the realisation of those principles of true Government which all of English blood are expected to uphold. By the strange contrarieties of popular suffrage, Franklin was not returned to the next assembly, only however by a minority of twenty-five in a vote of nearly four thousand, while Norris, who contrary to his wishes had been placed on the County Ticket was again chosen to the Assembly, and again became the Speaker, while Franklin, the majority in the Assembly remaining unbroken, was chosen Colonial Agent and carried abroad the petition for redress against the claims of the Proprietaries. Isaac Norris shortly again resigned the Speakership on 24 October 1764; and on 13 July, 1776, he died at his seat, Fair Hill. It was justly said of him by a cotemporary, "That in all his long public career he never asked a vote to get into the House, or solicited any member for posts of advantage or employment."
His public duties forbad him, in the want of robust health, from attending with any diligence to the duties of his Trusteeship of the College and Academy, and his service therein continued less than four years. At the meeting of the Trustees of 11 February, 1755, this minute appears:
As Isaac Norris, Esqr had never met the Trustees but once since his being chosen, and, it was said, had intimated he could not conveniently attend at their Meetings, Mr. Peters was desired to write to him, and
