z Benjamin Franklin + 5
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 followed by all the odious mixture of pride,
and beggary, and idleness, that have half depopulated
 and decultivated Spain; occasioning continual
extinction of families by the discouragements of
marriage and neglect in the 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 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