XXVIII 
TO MRS. SARAH BACHE! 
Passy, 26 January, 1784. 
My DEAR CHILD: —Your care in sending me the 
newspapers is very agreeable to me. I received by 
Captain Barney those relating to the Cincinnata. 
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 Con- 
federation, manifested their dislike of establishing 
ranks of nobility, by authority either of the Con- 
gress 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 oppo- 
sition to the solemnly declared sense of their coun- 
try! 1 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 ribands and crosses they have seen 
hanging to the button-holes of foreign officers. And 
1 Dr. Franklin's only daughter, married to a merchant in Phila- 
delphia, 
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