The New York Packet

Our Ambassador, Mr. Adams, having made it necessary to be well born, in order to be qualified for the higher offices of government, it has brought the subject, under the consideration of several writers, whose ideas seem to be very different from this artful and profound politician's. The witty Earl of Chesterfield, long ago, gave his sentiments on the matter as follows, "Great and illustrious birth is ascertained and authenticated by a pedigree carefully preserved in the family, which takes at least an hour's time to unroll, and when unrolled, discloses twenty intermarriages of valiant and puissant Geoffreys and Hildebrands, with as many chaste and pious Blaunches and Mauds, before the conquest, not without here and there a dash of the Plantagenets—But if unfortunately the insolent worms should have devoured the pedigree as well as the persons of the illustrious family, that defect may be supplied at the Herald's office, that inexhaustible repository of good sense, and useful knowledge."

Noble birth, implies only a peerage in the family; ancestors are by no means necessary for this kind of illustrious generation.
Birth: the parent is the midwife of it, and the very first decent is noble. The family arms, however modern, are dignified by the coronet and mantle; but the family livery is sometimes, for very good reasons, laid aside. Birth, singly, and without an epithet, extends, I cannot possibly say how far, but negatively it stops where useful arts and industry begin. Merchants, tradesmen, yeomen, farmers and ploughmen are not born, or at least in so mean a way as not to deserve that name; and it is perhaps for that reason that their mothers are said to be delivered, rather than brought to bed of them. But Baronets, Knights and Esquires, have the honor of being born. I must confess that before I got the key to this fashionable language, I was a good deal puzzled myself with the distinction of Birth and no Birth: and having no other guide than my own weak reason, I mistook the matter most grossly. I foolishly imagined that well born, meant born with a sound mind, in a sound body; a healthy strong constitution, joined to a good heart & a good understanding. But I never suspected that it could possibly mean the shrivelled, tasteless fruit of an old genealogical tree. "What can ennoble sycophants and slaves and cowards? Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards."