The laws of the society were published.  Men who read them in their closers, unwarmed by those sentiments of friendship which had produced them, inattentive to those pains which an approaching separation had excited in the minds of the instituters, politicians, who see in every thing only the dangers with which it threatens civil society, in fine, the laboring people, who, shielded by equal laws, had never seen any difference between man and man, but had read of terrible oppressions, which people of their description experience in other countries, from those who are distinguished by titles and badges, began to be alarmed at this new institution.  A remarkable silence, however, was observed.  Their solicitudes were long confined within the circles of private conversation.  At length, however, a Mr. Burke, Chief Justice of South Carolina, broke that silence.  He wrote against the new institution, foreboding its dangers, very imperfectly indeed, because he had nothing but his imagination to aid him.  An American could do no more; for to detail the real evils of aristocracy, they must be seen in Europe.  Burke’s fears were thought exaggerations in America; while in Europe, it is known that even Mirabeau has but faintly sketched the curses of hereditary aristocracy, as they are experienced here, and as they would have followed in America, had this institution remained.  The epigraph of Burke’s pamphlet, was ‘Blow ye the trumpet in Zion.’  Its effect corresponded with its epigraph.  This institution became, first, the subject of general conversation.  Next, it was made the subject of deliberation in the legislative Assemblies of some of the States.  The Governor of South Carolina censured it, in an address to the Assembly of that State.  The Assemblies of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania condemned its principles.  No circumstance, indeed, brought the consideration of it expressly before Congress; yet it had sunk deep into their minds.  An offer having been made to them, on the part of the Polish order of Divine Providence, to receive some of their distinguished citizens into that order, they made that an occasion to declare, that these distinctions were contrary to the principles of their Confederation.

The uneasiness excited by this institution had very early caught the notice of General Washington.  Still recollecting all the purity of the motives which gave it birth, he became sensible that it might produce political evils, which the warmth of those motives had masked.  Add to this, that it was disapproved by the mass of citizens of the Union.  This, alone, was reason strong enough, in a country where the will of the majority is the law, and ought to be the law.  He saw that the objects of the institution were too light to be opposed to considerations as serious as these; and that it was become necessary to annihilate it absolutely.  On this, therefore, he was decided.  The first annual meeting at Philadelphia was now at