he is said to have scouted this parricide
proposition, was equally worthy of his virtue and wisdom. The next
effort was, (on suggestion of the same individuals, in the moment of
their separation,) the establishment of an hereditary order, under
the name of the Cincinnati, ready prepared by that distinction to be
engrafted into the future frame of government, and placing General
Washington still at their head. The General wrote to me on this subject,
while I was in Congress at Annapolis, and an extract from my letter is
inserted in 5th Marshall's History, page 28. He afterwards called on me
at that place, on his way to a meeting of the society, and after a whole
evening of consultation, he left that place fully determined to use
all his endeavors for its total suppression. But he found it so firmly
riveted in the affections of the members, that, strengthened as they
happened to be by an adventitious occurrence of the moment, he could
effect no more than the abolition of its hereditary principle. He called
again on his return, and explained to me fully the opposition which had
been made, the effect of the occurrence from France, and the difficulty
with which its duration had been limited to the lives of the present
members. Further details will be found among my papers, in his and
my letters, and some in the _Encyclopedic Methodique et Dictionnaire
d'Economic Politique_, communicated by myself to M. Meusnier, its
author, who had made the establishment of this society the ground, in
that work, of a libel on our country.

The want of some authority which should procure justice to the public
creditors, and an observance of treaties with foreign nations, produced,
some time after, the call of a convention of the States at Annapolis.
Although, at this meeting, a difference of opinion was evident on the
question of a republican or kingly government, yet, so general through
the States was the sentiment in favor of the former, that the friends
of the latter confined themselves to a course of obstruction only, and
delay, to every thing proposed; they hoped, that nothing being done,
and all things going from bad to worse, a kingly government might be
usurped, and submitted to by the people, as better than anarchy and
wars, internal and external, the certain consequences of the present
want of a general government. The effect of their manoeuvres, with
the defective attendance of Deputies from the States, resulted in
the measure of