z Benjamin Franklin + 5 
often hurtful to that posterity, since it is apt to 
make them proud, disdaining to be employed in use- 
ful 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 followed by all the odious mixture of pride, 
and beggary, and idleness, that have half depopu- 
lated and decultivated Spain; occasioning continual 
extinction of families by the discouragements of 
marriage and neglect in the improvement of es- 
tates. 
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 fathers and mothers, 
instead of handing them down to their children. It 
would be a good precedent, and might have good 
effect. It would also be a kind of obedience of the 
fourth commandment, in which God enjoins us to 
honor our father and mother, but has nowhere 
directed us to honor our children. And certainly 
no mode of honoring those immediate authors of 
our being can be more effectual, than that of doing 
praiseworthy actions, which reflect honor 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. 
228 Fi