en, had, or can have, a right to set up hereditary
government. Were even ourselves to come again into existence, instead of
being succeeded by posterity, we have not now the right of taking from
ourselves the rights which would then be ours. On what ground, then, do
we pretend to take them from others?

All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny. An heritable crown,
or an heritable throne, or by what other fanciful name such things may
be called, have no other significant explanation than that mankind are
heritable property. To inherit a government, is to inherit the people,
as if they were flocks and herds.

With respect to the second head, that of being inadequate to the
purposes for which government is necessary, we have only to consider
what government essentially is, and compare it with the circumstances to
which hereditary succession is subject.

Government ought to be a thing always in full maturity. It ought to
be so constructed as to be superior to all the accidents to which
individual man is subject; and, therefore, hereditary succession, by
being subject to them all, is the most irregular and imperfect of all
the systems of government.

We have heard the Rights of Man called a levelling system; but the
only system to which the word levelling is truly applicable, is the
hereditary monarchical system. It is a system of mental levelling.
It indiscriminately admits every species of character to the same
authority. Vice and virtue, ignorance and wisdom, in short, every
quality good or bad, is put on the same level. Kings succeed each other,
not as rationals, but as animals. It signifies not what their mental or
moral characters are. Can we then be surprised at the abject state of
the human mind in monarchical countries, when the government itself is
formed on such an abject levelling system?--It has no fixed character.
To-day it is one thing; to-morrow it is something else. It changes with
the temper of every succeeding individual, and is subject to all the
varieties of each. It is government through the medium of passions and
accidents. It appears under all the various characters of childhood,
decrepitude, dotage, a thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in
crutches. It reverses the wholesome order of nature. It occasionally
puts children over men, and the conceits of nonage over wisdom and
experience. In short, we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of
government, than hereditary succession, in