Original French calf, gilt back, r.e., marbled endpapers. Initialled at sig. I and T by Jefferson, who has written at the foot of the cancelled leaf (page [101]): see this leaf corrected by another which is the next after the title page. With the Library of Congress 1815 bookplate.

Jefferson several times expressed his opinion of the Order of the Cincinnati.

On April 16, 1784, he wrote from Annapolis a long letter to George Washington on this subject, beginning: “ I received your favor of Apr. 8. by Col ^o. Harrison. the subject of it is interesting, and, so far as you have stood connected with it, has been matter of anxiety to me; because whatever may be the ultimate fate of the institution of the Cincinnati, as in it’s course it draws to it some degree of disapprobation, I have wished to see you standing on ground separated from it, and that the character which will be handed down to future ages at the head of our revolution may in no instance be compromitted in subordinate altercations. the subject has been at the point of my pen in every letter I have written to you, but has been still restrained by a reflection that you had among your friends more able counsellors, and, in yourself, one abler than them all . . . ”

On November 14, 1786, in a letter from Paris to George Washington, giving an account of the alterations he had made in the article by Demeusnier in the Encyclopédie on the États Unis, particularly in reference to the Cincinnati, Jefferson wrote: “ . . . what has heretofore passed between us on this institution makes it my duty to mention to you that I have never heard a person in Europe, learned or unlearned, express his thoughts on this institution, who did not consider it as dishonourable & destructive to our governments, and that every writing which has come out since my arrival here, in which it is mentioned considers it, even as now reformed, as the germ whose development is one day to destroy the fabric we have reared. I did not apprehend this while I had American ideas only, but I confess that what I have seen in Europe has brought me over to that opinion; & that tho’ the day may be at some distance, beyond the reach of our lives perhaps, yet it will certainly come, when, a single fibre left of this institution, will produce an hereditary aristocracy which will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world . . . ”

In his letter to M. Demeusnier, with the corrections in his article, Jefferson wrote a full account of the history of the Society of the Cincinnati (now in the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress).

On December 28, 1794, in a letter dated from Monticello to James Madison, Jefferson wrote: “ . . . The denunciation of the democratic societies is one of the extraordinary acts of boldness of which we have seen so many from the faction of Monocrats. it is wonderful indeed that the President should have permitted himself to be the organ of such an attack on the freedom of discussion, the freedom of writing, printing & publishing. it must be a matter of rare curiosity to get at the modifications of these rights proposed by them and to see what line their ingenuity would draw between democratical societies, whose avowed object is the nourishment of the republican principles of our constitution, and the society of the Cincinnati, a self-created one, carving out for itself hereditary distinctions, lowering over our constitution eternally, meeting together in all parts of the Union periodically, with closed doors, accumulating a capital in their separate treasury, corresponding secretly & regularly, & of which society the very persons denouncing the democrats are themselves the fathers, founders & high officers. their sight must be perfectly dazzled by the glittering of crowns & coronets, not to see the extravagance of the proposition to suppress the friends of general freedom, while those who wish to confine that freedom to the few, are permitted to go on in their principles & practices . . . ”

This is the first edition of this work, printed in England as it could not be printed in Paris, and was several times reprinted. An English version translated by Samuel Romilly was published in 1785. This work is founded on that of Aedanus Burke (see the next entry).

In his “Avis” Mirabeau states: “Le titre de cet ouvrage n’est point une fraude officieuse. Il a paru l’année passée à Philadelphie, chez Robert Bell, in Third-street, un pamphlet écrit en Anglois sous ce titre: Considerations on the society or order of Cincinnati, lately ”