f Royalty as such is baneful, as hereditary succession it is
equally revolting and ridiculous. What! there exists among my kind a man
who pretends that he is born to govern me? Whence derived he such right?
From his and my ancestors, says he. But how could they transmit to him
a right they did not possess? Man has no authority over generations
unborn. I cannot be the slave of the dead, more than of the living.
Suppose that instead of our posterity, it was we who should succeed
ourselves: we should not to-day be able to despoil ourselves of the
rights which would belong to us in our second life: for a stronger
reason we cannot so despoil others.

An hereditary crown! A transmissible throne! What a notion! With even a
little reflexion, can any one tolerate it? Should human beings then be
the property of certain individuals, born or to be born? Are we then to
treat our descendants 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