Hampshire ;* Charles Garth, a member of Par-
Hament, the agent of South Carolina ; William
Bollan, agent of the Massachusetts Council ;
Thomas Life, the agent of Connecticut; Ed-
mund Burke, who had been chosen agent of
New York in 1771 ; Arthur Lee, who held an
appointment to succeed Benjamin Franklin as
agent of the Massachusetts Assembly; and
Franklin himself, who had been appointed in
1 765 agent of Pennsylvania, in 1 768 of Georgia,
in the same year of New Jersey, and in 1770
of the Massachusetts Assembly. For the first
time, these agents were deputed to act for the
"United Colonies;" but Bollan, Lee, and
Franklin, who alone, according to Franklin,
"properly had anything to do with the tea
business,"-j- were the only ones who accepted
the office. Their duties were, to a certain ex-

* Force's American Archives (fourth series), I, 938, gives the names of the Colo-
nies these agents represented. Wentworth soon afterwards became a secret agent
of the British Government, and entered into active correspondence with the Earl of
Suffolk and William Eden, furnishing them with information concerning the prog-
ress of American affairs. (See Stevens' FaK:simUes of Manuscripts in European
Archives Relating to America.)

f Works (Bigelow's edition), V, 509.
BEFORE THE CONSTITUTION. 3

tent, diplomatic, and they were the representa-
tives of a power that was soon to become inde-
pendent.
