all its cases, presents.

Could it be made a decree in nature, or an edict registered in heaven,
and man could know it, that virtue and wisdom should invariably
appertain to hereditary succession, the objection to it would be
removed; but when we see that nature acts as if she disowned and sported
with the hereditary system; that the mental character of successors, in
all countries, is below the average of human understanding; that one is
a tyrant, another an idiot, a third insane, and some all three together,
it is impossible to attach confidence to it, when reason in man has
power to act.

It is not to the Abbe Sieyes that I need apply this reasoning; he has
already saved me that trouble by giving his own opinion upon the
case. "If it be asked," says he, "what is my opinion with respect to
hereditary right, I answer without hesitation, That in good theory, an
hereditary transmission of any power of office, can never accord with
the laws of a true representation. Hereditaryship is, in this sense, as
much an attaint upon principle, as an outrage upon society. But let
us," continues he, "refer to the history of all elective monarchies and
principalities: is there one in which the elective mode is not worse
than the hereditary succession?"

As to debating on which is the worst of the two, it is admitting both
to be bad; and herein we are agreed. The preference which the Abbe has
given, is a condemnation of the thing that he prefers. Such a mode of
reasoning on such a subject is inadmissible, because it finally amounts
to an accusation upon Providence, as if she had left to man no other
choice with respect to government than between two evils, the best of
which he admits to be "an attaint upon principle, and an outrage upon
society."

Passing over, for the present, all the evils and mischiefs which
monarchy has occasioned in the world, nothing can more effectually
prove its uselessness in a state of civil government, than making it
hereditary. Would we make any office hereditary that required wisdom and
abilities to fill it? And where wisdom and abilities are not necessary,
such an office, whatever it may be, is superfluous or insignificant.

Hereditary succession is a burlesque upon monarchy. It puts it in the
most ridiculous light, by presenting it as an office which any child or
idiot may fill. It requires some talents to be a common mechanic; but
to be a king requires only the animal figure of man--a sort of breat