by adopting the only possible measure for preventing this source of beneficence from being for ever dried up. May it please your Excellency, it remains to be decided whether our request is reasonable or unreasonable. What do we ask? We ask nothing but protection for a charity, devoted to the unfortunate, under peculiar circumstances and relations as to our feelings. Yes, may it please your Excellency, suffer me to repeat it with emphasis, we ask NOTHING but PROTECTION for a CHARITY; and will THAT be refused? Will you REFUSE that PROTECTION, in this case, which you have granted to societies for establishing banks, insurance companies, turnpike-roads, tollbridges, as well as for several other purposes supposed to be useful to some portion of the commonwealth? Are we a description of citizens less favoured than others? And have we forfeited the good opinion of our country by fighting for its independence? Divest our institution of the formidable name of Cincinnati (if there be a magic in the name that can make it so), and what will there be but a friendly and charitable society, to which you could have no difficulty in granting what is now solicited! As a society, we are neither numerous, or rich, or powerful, or, perhaps, more united in political sentiments than the rest of the inhabitants of the State. As individuals, we are much the greater part of us so far removed from indigence as never to expect any benefit for ourselves or our families from the fund during our lives. Sir, we can then have little interest in the object of our request, so far as it respects us personally: for, after a few more years shall have revolved, not one of us who served through the revolutionary war I will be left alive. But, in the hour of death, it would afford a consolation to hope, that, if we have done some little good in our day, it might be made to survive us, Leave was given in the House of Representatives, by a large majority, to bring in a bill in form on the subject of the memorial. But it was negatived in the other house. And, conse. quently, the request of the society was not granted, APPENDIX. LETTER I. GEORGE WASHINGTON, President of the United States of America, to DAVID HUMPHREYS, Minister of the United States of America, at Lisbon. MY DEAR SIR, Philadelphia, March 16th, 1791. As this letter is wholly of a private nature, I refer you to Mr. Jefferson's official communications for every thing relative to your appointment at the Court of Lisbon, &c. and shall confine myself to acknowledging your two letters, viz. one from London, of October 31, and the other from Lisbon, of November 30, 1790; and to such general observations as may occur in the course of my writing. * Congress finished their session the 3d inst. in the course of which they received and granted the applications of Kentucky and Vermont for admission into the union; the former after August, 1792, and the latter immediately. They made provision for the interest on the national debt, by laying a higher duty than that which heretofore existed on spirituous liquors imported or manufactured. They established a national bank. They passed a law for certain measures to be taken towards establishing a mint; and finished much other business of less importance; conducting, on all occasions, with great harmony and cordiality. In some few instances, particularly in passing the law for higher duties mentioned above, and more especially on the subject of the bank, the line between the Eastern and Southern interest appeared more strongly marked than could have been wished: the former in favour of, and the latter against those measures. But the debates were conducted with temper and candour. The convention between Spain and England seems once more to have composed the European powers, except the Empress and *The original letters will be deposited where they may be seen by the public. It is probable that the few lines now omitted will be published hereafter. |