Your Care in sending me the News papers is very agreable to me. I receiv’d by Capt. Barney those relating to the Cincinnati. My Opinion of the Institution cannot be of much Importance. I only wonder that when the united Wisdom of our Nation had, in the Articles of Confederation, manifested their Dislike of establishing Ranks of Nobility, by Authority either of the Congress or of any particular State, a Number of private Persons should think proper to distinguish themselves and their Posterity from their Fellow Citizens, and form an Order of hereditary Knights, in direct Opposition to the solemnly declared Sense of their Country. I imagine it must be likewise contrary to the Good Sense of most of those drawn into it, by the Persuasion of its Projectors, who have been too much struck with the Ribbands and Crosses they have seen among them, hanging to the Button-holes of Foreign Officers. And I suppose those who disapprove of it have not hitherto given it much Opposition, from a Principle a little like that of your Mother, relating to punctilious Persons, who are always exacting little Observances of Respect, that if People can be pleased with small Matters, it is pity but they should have them. In this View, perhaps I should not myself, if my Advice had been asked, have objected to their Wearing their Ribband and Badge according to their Fancy, tho’ I certainly should to the entailing it as an Honour on their Posterity. For Honour worthily obtain’d, as that for Example of our Officers, is in its Nature a personal Thing, and incommunicable to any but those who had some Share in obtaining it. Thus among the Chinese, the most antient, and, from long Experience, the wisest of Nations, Honour does not descend but ascends. If a Man from his Learning, his Wisdom or his Valour, is promoted by the Emperor to the Rank of Mandarin, his Parents are immediately intitled to all the same Ceremonies of Respect from the People, that are establish’d as due to the Mandarin himself; on this Supposition, that it must have been owing to the Education, Instruction, and good Example afforded him by his Parents that he was rendered capable of Serving the Publick. This ascending Honour is therefore useful to the State as it encourages Parents to give their Children a good and virtuous Education. But the descending Honour, to Posterity who could have had no Share in obtaining it, is not only groundless and absurd, but often hurtful to that Posterity, since it is apt to make them proud, disdaining to be employed in useful Arts, and thence falling into Poverty and all the Meannesses, Servility and Wretchedness attending it; which is the present case with much of what is called the Noblesse in Europe. Or if, to keep up the Dignity of the Family, Estates are entailed entire on the Eldest Male Heir, another Pest to Industry and Improvement of the Country is introduced, which will be follow’d by all the odious Mixture of Pride and Beggary, and Idleness that have half depopulated Spain, occasioning continual Extinction of Families by the Discouragements of Marriage and improvement of Estates. I wish therefore that the Cincinnati, if they must go on with their Project, would direct the Badges of their Order to be worn by their Parents instead of handing them down to their Children. It would be a good Precedent, and might have good Effects. It would also be a kind of Obedience to the fourth Commandment, in which God enjoins us to honour our Father and Mother, but has no where directed us to honour our Children. And certainly no Mode of honouring those immediate Authors of our Being can be more effectual, than that of doing praiseworthy Actions, which reflect honour on those who gave us our Education; or more becoming than that of manifesting by some public Expression or Token that it is to their Instruction and Example we ascribe the Merit of those Actions.

But the Absurdity of descending Honours is not a mere Matter of philosophical Opinion, it is capable of mathematical Demonstration. A Man’s Son, for instance, is but half of his Family, the other half belonging to the Family of his Wife. His Son too, marrying into another Family, his Share in the Grandson is but a fourth; In the Great Grandson, by the same Process, it is but an Eighth. In the next Generation a Sixteenth: The next a Thirty-second. The next a Sixty-fourth. The next an Hundred and twenty-eighth. The next a Two hundred and Fifty-sixth: and the next a Five hundred and twelfth. Thus in Nine Generations, which will not require more than 300 Years, (no very great Antiquity for a Family) our present Chevalier of the Order of Cincinnatus’s Share in the then existing Knight will be but a 512th part; which, allowing the present certain Fidelity of American Wives to be insured down thro’ all those Nine Generations, is so small a Consideration, that methinks no reasonable Man would hazard for the sake of it the disagreable Consequences of the Jealousy, Envy and Ill-will of his Countrymen.

Let us go back with our Calculation from this young Noble, the 512th. part of the present Knight, thro’ his nine Generations till we return to the Year of the Institution. He must have had a Father and Mother, they are two. Each of them had a Father and Mother, they are four. Those of the next preceding Generation will be eight; the next Sixteen; the next thirty-two; the next Sixty-four; the next One hundred and Twenty-eight; the next Two hundred and fifty-six; and the ninth in this Retrocession Five hundred and twelve, who must be now existing, and all contribute their Proportion of this future Chevalier de Cincinnatus. These

One Thousand and Twenty-two Men and Women Contributors to the Formation of one Knight. And if we are to have a Thousand of these future Knights there must be now and hereafter existing One Million and Twenty two Thousand Fathers and Mothers who are to contribute to their Production, unless a Part of the Number are employ’d in making more Knights than One. Let us strike off then the 22000 on the Supposition of this double Employ, and then consider whether after a reasonable Estimation of the Number of Rogues, and Fools, and Royalists and Scoundrels and Prostitutes that are mix’d with and help to make up necessarily their Million of Predecessors, Posterity will have much reason to boast of the noble Blood of the then existing Set of Chevaliers de Cincinnatus. I hope therefore that the Order will drop this part of their Project, and content themselves as the Knights of the Garter, Bath, Thistle, St. Louis and other Orders of Europe do, with a Life Enjoyment of their little Badge and Ribband, and let the Distinction die with those who have merited it. This I imagine will give no Offence. For my own part, I shall think it a Convenience when I go into a Company where there may be Faces unknown to me, if I discover by this Badge the Persons who merit some particular Expression of my Respect; and it will save modest Virtue the Trouble of calling for our Regard, by awkward round-about Intimations of having been heretofore employ’d in the Continental Service.

The Gentleman who made the Voyage to France to provide the Ribbands and Medals has executed his Commission. To me they seem tolerably done, but all such Things are criticised. Some find fault with the Latin, as wanting classic Elegance and Correctness; and since our Nine Universities were not able to furnish better Latin, it was Pity, they say, that the Mottos had not been in English. Others object to the Title, as not properly assumable by any but Gen. Washington, who serv’d without Pay. Others object to the Bald Eagle, as looking too much like a Dindon, or Turkey. For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen as the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perch’d on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him. With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping and Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper Emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our Country, tho’ exactly fit for that Order of Knights which the French call Chevaliers d’Industrie. I am on this account not displeas’d that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For in Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America. Eagles have been found in all Countries, but the Turkey was peculiar to ours, the first of the Species seen in Europe being brought to France by the Jesuits from Canada, and serv’d up at the Wedding Table of Charles the ninth. He is besides, tho’ a little vain and silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.

I shall not enter into the Criticisms made upon their Latin. The gallant Officers of America may not have the Merit of being great Scholars, but they undoubtedly merit much as brave Soldiers from their Country, which should therefore not leave them merely Fame for their Virtutis Premium; which is one of their Latin Mottos. Their Esto perpetua another is an excellent Wish, if they mean it for their Country, bad, if intended for their Order. The States should not only restore to them the Omnia of their first Motto which many of them have left and lost, but pay them justly, and reward them generously. They should not be suffered to remain with their new created Chivalry entirely in the Situation of the Gentleman in the Story, which their Omnia reliquit reminds me of. You know every thing makes me recollect some Story. He had built a very fine House, and thereby much impair’d his Fortune. He had a Pride however in showing it to his Acquaintance. One of them after viewing it all, remark’d a Motto over the Door, OIA Vanitas. What, says he, is the Meaning of this OIA? ’tis a Word I don’t understand. I will tell you says the Gentleman; I had a mind to have the Motto cut on a Piece of smooth Marble, but there was not room for it between the Ornaments to be put in Characters large enough to be read. I therefore made use of a Contraction antiently very common in Latin Manuscripts, by which the m’s and n’s in Words are omitted, and the Omission noted by a little Dash above, which you may see there, so that the Word is Omnia, Omnia Vanitas. O, says his Friend, I now comprehend the Meaning of your Motto, it relates to your Edifice; and signifies, that if you have abridged your Omnia, you have nevertheless left your Vanitas legible at full length. I am ever, Your affectionate Father