admits of none but men
properly qualified into the Government, or removes them if they prove
to be otherwise. Whereas, in the hereditary system, a nation may be
encumbered with a knave or an ideot for a whole life-time, and not be
benefited by a successor.

Fourthly, Because there does not exist a right to establish hereditary
government, or, in other words, hereditary successors, because
hereditary government always means a government yet to come, and the
case always is, that those who are to live afterwards have the same
right to establish government for themselves, as the people had who
lived before them; and, therefore, all laws attempting to establish
hereditary government, are founded on assumption and political fiction.

If these positions be truths, and I challenge any man to prove the
contrary; if they tend to instruct and enlighten mankind, and to free
them from error, oppression, and political superstition, which are the
objects I have in view in publishing them, that Jury would commit an act
of injustice to their country, and to me, if not an act of perjury, that
should call them _false, wicked, and malicious_.

Dragonetti, in his treatise "On Virtues and Rewards," has a paragraph
worthy of being recorded in every country in the world--"The science
(says he,) of the politician, consists, in, fixing the true point of
happiness and freedom. Those men deserve the gratitude of ages who
should discover a mode of government that contained the greatest sum of
_individual happiness_ with the least _national expence_." But if Juries
are to be made use of to prohibit enquiry, to suppress truth, and
to stop the progress of knowledge, this boasted palladium of liberty
becomes the most successful instrument of tyranny.

Among the arts practised at the Bar, and from the Bench, to impose
upon the understanding of a Jury, and to obtain a Verdict where
the consciences of men could not otherwise consent, one of the most
successful has been that of calling _truth a libel_, and of insinuating
that the words "_falsely, wickedly, and maliciously_," though they
are made the formidable and high sounding part of the charge, are not
matters of consideration with a Jury. For what purpose, then, are they
retained, unless it be for that of imposition and wilful defamation?

I cannot conceive a greater violation of order, nor a more abominable
insult upon morality, and upon human understanding, than to see a man
sitting in the judg