lain terms a very paltry rascally original. It
certainly hath no divinity in it. However, it is needless to spend
much time in exposing the folly of hereditary right, if there are any
so weak as to believe it, let them promiscuously worship the ass and
lion, and welcome. I shall neither copy their humility, nor disturb
their devotion.

Yet I should be glad to ask how they suppose kings came at first?
The question admits but of three answers, viz. either by lot, by
election, or by usurpation. If the first king was taken by lot, it
establishes a precedent for the next, which excludes hereditary
succession. Saul was by lot, yet the succession was not hereditary,
neither does it appear from that transaction there was any intention
it ever should. If the first king of any country was by election,
that likewise establishes a precedent for the next; for to say, that
the RIGHT of all future generations is taken away, by the act of
the first electors, in their choice not only of a king, but of a
family of kings for ever, hath no parrallel in or out of scripture
but the doctrine of original sin, which supposes the free will of all
men lost in Adam; and from such comparison, and it will admit of no
other, hereditary succession can derive no glory. For as in Adam all
sinned, and as in the first electors all men obeyed; as in the one
all mankind were subjected to Satan, and in the other to Sovereignty;
as our innocence was lost in the first, and our authority in the
last; and as both disable us from reassuming some former state and
privilege, it unanswerably follows that original sin and hereditary
succession are parallels. Dishonorable rank! Inglorious connexion!
Yet the most subtile sophist cannot produce a juster simile.

As to usurpation, no man will be so hardy as to defend it; and that
William the Conqueror was an usurper is a fact not to be
contradicted. The plain truth is, that the antiquity of English
monarchy will not bear looking into.

But it is not so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary
succession which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and
wise men it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens
a door to the FOOLISH, the WICKED, and the IMPROPER, it hath in
it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to
reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest
of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the
world they act in differs