cendants in advance as cattle, who shall have neither will
nor rights of their own? To inherit government is to inherit peoples,
as if they were herds. It is the basest, the most shameful fantasy that
ever degraded mankind.

It is wrong to reproach kings with their ferocity, their brutal
indifference, the oppressions of the people, and molestations of
citizens: it is hereditary succession that makes them what they are:
this breeds monsters as a marsh breeds vipers.

* J. J. Rousseau, Contrat Social.--Author.

The logic on which the hereditary prince rests is in effect this: I
derive my power from my birth; I derive my birth from God; therefore
I owe nothing to men. It is little that he has at hand a complacent
minister, he continues to indulge, conscientiously, in all the crimes of
tyranny. This has been seen in all times and countries.

Tell me, then, what is there in common between him who is master of a
people, and the people of whom he is master? Are these masters really of
their kind? It is by sympathy that we are good and human: with whom does
a monarch sympathize? When my neighbor suffers I pity, because I put
myself in his place: a monarch pities none, because he has never been,
can never be, in any other place than his own.

A monarch is an egoist by nature, the _egoist par excellence_. A
thousand traits show that this kind of men have no point of contact with
the rest of humanity. There was demanded of Charles II. the punishment
of Lauderdale, his favorite, who had infamously oppressed the Scotch.
"Yes," said Charles coolly, "this man has done much against the Scotch,
but I cannot see that he has done anything against my interests." Louis
XIV. often said: "If I follow the wishes of the people, I cannot act the
king." Even such phrases as "misfortunes of the State," "safety of the
State," filled Louis XIV. with wrath.

Could nature make a law which should assure virtue and wisdom invariably
in these privileged castes that perpetuate themselves on thrones, there
would be no objection to their hereditary succession. But let us pass
Europe in review: all of its monarchs are the meanest of men. This one
a tyrant, that one an imbecile, another a traitor, the next a debauchee,
while some muster all the vices. It looks as if fate and nature had
aimed to show our epoch, and all nations, the absurdity and enormity of
Royalty.

But I mistake: this epoch has nothing peculiar. For, such is the
essential vice o