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 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!
 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 Philadelphia,


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