The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

Franklin scorned what he called this “order of hereditary knights.” It insulted the American people, who had registered both legal and emotional opposition to the conferral of titles and ranks of nobility. Besides, like all schemes of hereditary honors, it put things just backward. “Honour, worthily obtained (as for example that of our officers) is in its nature a personal thing, and incommunicable to any but those who had some share in obtaining it.” If honor had to be assigned to families, it ought to be handed up to parents rather than down to children. The parents of a person who did good deeds might logically share some credit for the good deeds of their child, in that they were responsible for the child’s education and overall rearing; but the children of the one who did good deeds could not share any such credit. Besides, even granting the principle of descending honor, the mathematics of procreation rendered its application absurd. “A man’s son, for instance, is but half of his family, the other half belonging to the family of his wife. His son, too, marrying into another family, his share in the grandson is but a fourth.” And so on, till by the eighth or tenth generation, and allowing for “a reasonable estimation of the number of rogues and fools and royalists and scoundrels and prostitutes that are mixed with,” the contribution of the original Cincinnatus was diluted beyond recognition.