Note 119 — Part I (continued 8)

B. Faÿ in "Franklin et Mirabeau collaborateurs" (see Bibliography) shows that Franklin furnished information for Considerations on the Order of Cincinnatus ... (London ed., 1785). Mirabeau thunders, "Must we then own, with the enemies of freedom, that the noble ideas of Sidney, Locke, Rousseau, and others, who have indulged dreams of political happiness, may be the object of a sublime theory, but cannot possibly be reduced into practice?" (Mirabeau, op. cit., 73.) The members of the order will in time become "Gothic tyrants" (ibid., 14). He warns America against paralleling the decadence of Rome (ibid., 25), suggesting a Rousseauistic equalitarianism. Other references to Franklin's antipathy for the Order are Writings, IX, 222, 269-70. Smyth observes that "passages in brackets are not found in the draft in Library of Congress."