On
his return from the meeting, he called on me again, and related to me
the course the thing had taken. He. said, that, from the beginning,
he had used every endeavor to prevail on the officers to renounce the
project altogether, urging the many considerations which would render
it odious to their fellow-citizens, and disreputable and injurious to
themselves; that he had at length prevailed on most of the old officers
to reject it, although with great and warm opposition from others, and
especially the younger ones, among whom he named Colonel W. S. Smith
as particularly intemperate. But that in this state of things, when he
thought the question safe, and the meeting drawing to a close, Major
L'Enfant arrived from France with a bundle of eagles, for which he had
been sent there, with letters from the French officers who had served
in. America, praying for admission into the order, and a solemn act of
their King permitting them to wear its ensign. This, he said, changed
the face of matters at once, produced an entire revolution of sentiment,
and turned the torrent so strongly in an opposite direction, that
it could be no longer withstood: all he could then obtain, was a
suppression of the hereditary quality. He added, that it was the French
applications, and respect for the approbation of the King, which saved
the establishment in its modified and temporary form. Disapproving thus
of the institution as much as I did, and conscious that I knew him to do
so, he could never suppose that I meant to include him among the Samsons
in the field, whose object was to draw over us the form, as they
made the letter say, of the British government, and especially its
aristocractic member, an hereditary House of Lords.
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