otest ages,
crowns and kingships were worn by heroes, brigands, and knight-errants,
they confound the two things,--royalty and despotism. But royalty dates
from the creation of man; it existed in the age of negative communism.
Ancient heroism (and the despotism which it engendered) commenced only
with the first manifestation of the idea of justice; that is, with the
reign of force. As soon as the strongest, in the comparison of merits,
was decided to be the best, the oldest had to abandon his position, and
royalty became despotic.

The spontaneous, instinctive, and--so to speak--physiological origin of
royalty gives it, in the beginning, a superhuman character. The
nations connected it with the gods, from whom they said the first kings
descended. This notion was the origin of the divine genealogies of royal
families, the incarnations of gods, and the messianic fables. From it
sprang the doctrine of divine right, which is still championed by a few
singular characters.

Royalty was at first elective, because--at a time when man produced but
little and possessed nothing--property was too weak to establish the
principle of heredity, and secure to the son the throne of his father;
but as soon as fields were cleared, and cities built, each function
was, like every thing else, appropriated, and hereditary kingships and
priesthoods were the result. The principle of heredity was carried into
even the most ordinary professions,--a circumstance which led to class
distinctions, pride of station, and abjection of the common people, and
which confirms my assertion, concerning the principle of patrimonial
succession, that it is a method suggested by Nature of filling vacancies
in business, and completing unfinished tasks.

From time to time, ambition caused usurpers, or SUPPLANTERS of kings,
to start up; and, in consequence, some were called kings by right, or
legitimate kings, and others TYRANTS. But we must not let these names
deceive us. There have been execrable kings, and very tolerable tyrants.
Royalty may always be good, when it is the only possible form of
government; legitimate it is never. Neither heredity, nor election,
nor universal suffrage, nor the excellence of the sovereign, nor the
consecration of religion and of time, can make royalty legitimate.
Whatever form it takes,--monarchic, oligarchic, or democratic,--royalty,
or the government of man by man, is illegitimate and absurd.

Man, in order to procure as speedi