was a sensible mark of his subordination to the community.

It is easy to imagine that an independent people, so little restrained
by law and cultivated by science, would not be very strict in
maintaining a regular succession of their princes. Though they paid
great regard to the royal family, and ascribed to it an undisputed
superiority, they either had no rule, or none that was steadily
observed, in filling the vacant throne; and present convenience, in that
emergency, was more attended to than general principles. We are
not, however, to suppose that the crown was considered as altogether
elective; and that a regular plan was traced by the constitution for
supplying, by the suffrages of the people, every vacancy made by the
demise of the first magistrate. If any king left a son of an age and
capacity fit for government, the young prince naturally stepped into the
throne: if he was a minor, his uncle, or the next prince of the blood,
was promoted to the government, and left the sceptre to his posterity:
any sovereign, by taking previous measures with the leading men, had it
greatly in his power to appoint his successor: all these changes, and
indeed the ordinary administration of government, required the express
concurrence, or at least the tacit acquiescence of the people; but
possession, however obtained, was extremely apt to secure their
obedience, and the idea of any right, which was once excluded was
but feeble and imperfect. This is so much the case in all barbarous
monarchies, and occurs so often in the history of the Anglo-Saxons, that
we cannot consistently entertain any other notion of their government.
The idea of an hereditary succession in authority is so natural to
men, and is so much fortified by the usual rule in transmitting private
possessions, that it must retain a great influence on every society,
which does not exclude it by the refinements of a republican
constitution. But as there is a material difference between gov-*
*ernment and private possessions, and every man is not as much qualified
for exercising the one as for enjoying the other, a people who are not
sensible of the general advantages attending a fixed rule are apt to
make great leaps in the succession, and frequently to pass over the
person, who, had he possessed the requisite years and abilities, would
have been thought entitled to the sovereignty. Thus these monarchies are
not, strictly speaking, either elective or hereditary; and tho