which prevented a total annihilation of the order.  Though they are obliged by a prudent foresight, to keep out every thing from among themselves, which might pretend to divide them into orders, and to degrade one description of men below another, yet they hear with pleasure, that their allies, whom circumstances have already placed under these distinctions, are willing to consider it as one, to have aided them in the establishment of their liberties, and to wear a badge which may recall them to their remembrance; and it would be an extreme affliction to them, if the domestic reformation which has been found necessary, if the censures of individual writers, or if any other circumstance, should discourage the wearing of their badge, or lessen its reputation.

This short but true, history of the order of the Cincinnati, taken from the mouths of persons on the spot, who were privy to its origin and progress, and who know its present state, is the best apology which can be made for an institution, which appeared to be, and was really, so heterogeneous to the governments in which it was erected.

It should be further considered, that, in America, no other distinction between man and man had ever been known, but that of persons in office, exercising powers by authority of the laws, and private individuals.  Among these last, the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionary, and generally, on a more favored one, whenever their rights seemed to jar.  It has been seen that a shoemaker, or other artisan, removed by the voice of his country from his work-bench, into a chair of office, has instantly commanded all the respect and obedience, which the laws ascribe to his office.  But of distinctions by birth or badge, they had no more idea than they had of the mode of existence in the moon or planets.  They had heard only that there were such, and knew that they must be wrong.  A due horror of the evils which flow from these distinctions, could be excited in Europe only, where the dignity of man is lost in arbitrary distinctions, where the human species is classed into several stages of degradation, where the many are crouched under the weight of the few, and where the order established can present to the contemplation of a thinking being, no other picture, than that of God Almighty and his angels, trampling under foot the host of the damned.  No wonder, then, that the institution of the Cincinnati should be innocently conceived by one order of American citizens, should raise in the other orders, only a slow, temperate, and rational opposition, and should be viewed in Europe as a detestable parricide.

The second and third branches of this subject, nobody can better execute than M. de Meusnier.  Perhaps it may be curious to him to see how they strike an American mind at present.  He shall, therefore, have the ideas of one, who was an enemy to the institution from the first moment of its conception, but who was always sensible, that the officers neither foresaw nor intended the injury they were doing to their country.