Europe and the American Revolution 203
the government of the United States, in the form of four letters addressed to
Adams.
Mably took the opposite line from Turgot.^46 He heartily approved of the sepa-
ration and balance of powers in the American constitutions, and after surveying
them all, and commenting unfavorably on that of Pennsylvania, announced his
preference for the constitution of Massachusetts, which of course his friend Adams
had mainly written. He preferred that of Massachusetts, he said, because it placed
more limits upon democracy than the others. He thus launched the notion that the
one American constitution written during the war that provided for direct popular
election of governor, senators, and representatives by a wide franchise was pecu-
liarly undemocratic. Mably was denounced as an aristocrat in both France and
America. He is said to have been burned in effigy in the United States. This is the
same Mably who is also regarded as an early prophet of socialism, and who had
remarked to Adams (and Adams agreed) that people who are hungry cannot be
punctilious about virtue.
Mably was no “aristocrat”; he did not like aristocracy, he only feared that some-
thing of the sort was inevitable. He was painfully aware of inequalities of wealth.
He thought that the rich and poor had different interests. Hence, unlike Turgot, he
believed that American governments should have powers of regulation to prevent
the accumulation of ex cessive fortunes. He felt that “germs” of aristocracy already
existed in America because of the old connection with England, and that even in
America, as in Europe, there were too many “prejudices” to make pure democracy
feasible without civil strife. The problem, as he saw it, was on the one hand to pre-
vent the growth of aristocracy by suitable legislation, and on the other hand to give
incipient aristocracy, or men of wealth, enough of a place in the commonwealth to
make them accept the government peaceably. Mably did not believe in Adams’
popularly elected executive (nor did any Frenchman, or Jefferson either), but he
did firmly believe in a two- chamber system with a strong senate, by which “aristoc-
racy and democracy are held in equilibrium.”
Mably wrote these comments late in 1783. At that very time, in America, the
worst fears of friends of America seemed to be confirmed. The officers of the Con-
tinental Army, on disbanding, founded the Society of the Cincinnati. The Society
was to be composed of former American and French officers of the War of Inde-
pendence; it was to have permanent funds, periodic assemblies, and distinctive em-
blems and badges; and membership was to be inherited by descendants. Europeans
and Americans in Europe immediately sensed the everlasting menace of heredi-
tary social rank. Franklin in Paris, on first hearing of the Cincinnati, scoffed at
them as “hereditary knights”; Adams in Holland sarcastically called the idea a
“French blessing,” defacing “the beauty of our temple of liberty.”^47 Franklin gave a
pamphlet against the Cincinnati by Aedanus Burke of South Carolina to the
Count de Mirabeau to translate into French. Mirabeau, the future leader of the
French Revolution, adapted and amplified it into a pamphlet of his own, Consi-
46 G. B. de Mably, Observations sur le gouvernement et les lois des Etats- Unis d ’Amérique (Amster-
dam, 1784).
47 Franklin, Work s, X, 273–81, 421; Adams, Work s, VIII, 187; IX, 524; V, 488.