by those aids and good offices, to which their situations had given occasion, it was natural, I say, for these to seize with fondness any proposition which promised to bring them together again, at certain and regular periods.  And this, I take for granted, was the origin and object of this institution:  and I have no suspicion that they foresaw, much less intended, those mischiefs which exist perhaps in the forebodings of politicians only.  I doubt, however, whether in its execution, it would be found to answer the wishes of those who framed it, and to foster those friendships it was intended to preserve.  The members would be brought together at their annual assemblies no longer to encounter a common enemy, but to encounter one another in debate and sentiment.  For something, I suppose, is to be done at these meetings, and, however unimportant, it will suffice to produce difference of opinion, contradiction, and irritation.  The way to make friends quarrel is to put them in disputation under the public eye.  An experience of near twenty years has taught me, that few friendships stand this test, and that public assemblies where every one is free to act and speak, are the most powerful looseners of the bands of private friendship.  I think, therefore, that this institution would fail in its principal object, the perpetuation of the personal friendships contracted through the war.

The objections of those who are opposed to the institution shall be briefly sketched.  You will readily fill them up.  They urge that it is against the Confederation—­against the letter of some of our constitutions—­against the spirit of all of them;—­that the foundation on which all these are built, is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and, particularly, the denial of a pre-eminence by birth; that however, in their present dispositions, citizens might decline accepting honorary instalments[sp.]into the order; but a time, may come, when a change of dispositions would render these flattering, when a well directed distribution of them might draw into the order all the men of talents, of office, and wealth, and in this case, would probably procure an ingraftment into the government; that in this, they will be supported by their foreign members, and the wishes and influence of foreign courts; that experience has shown that the hereditary branches of modern governments are the patrons of privilege and prerogative, and not of the natural rights of the people, whose oppressors they generally are:  that besides these evils, which are remote, others may take place more immediately; that a distinction is kept up between the civil and military, which it is for the happiness of both to obliterate; that when the members assemble the, will be proposing to do something, and what that something may be, will depend on actual circumstances; that being an organized body, under habits of subordination, the first obstruction to enterprise will be already surmounted; that the moderation and virtue of a single character have probably prevented this Revolution from being closed as most others have been, by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish; that he is not immortal, and his successor, or some of his successors, may be led by false calculation into a less certain road to glory.