her generation of the same description who
are to succeed them, it comprehends all those who are above the age of
twenty-one years, at the time that we count from; and a generation of
this kind will continue in authority between fourteen and twenty-one
years, that is, until the number of minors, who shall have arrived at
age, shall be greater than the number of persons remaining of the former
stock.

For example: if France, at this or any other moment, contains
twenty-four millions of souls, twelve millions will be males, and twelve
females. Of the twelve millions of males, six millions will be of the
age of twenty-one years, and six will be under, and the authority
to govern will reside in the first six. But every day will make some
alteration, and in twenty-one years every one of those minors who
survives will have arrived at age, and the greater part of the former
stock will be gone: the majority of persons then living, in whom the
legal authority resides, will be composed of those who, twenty-one years
before, had no legal existence. Those will be fathers and grandfathers
in their turn, and, in the next twenty-one years, (or less) another race
of minors, arrived at age, will succeed them, and so on.

As this is ever the case, and as every generation is equal in rights to
another, it consequently follows, that there cannot be a right in any
to establish government by hereditary succession, because it would be
supposing itself possessed of a right superior to the rest, namely,
that of commanding by its own authority how the world shall be hereafter
governed and who shall govern it. Every age and generation is, and must
be, (as a matter of right,) as free to act for itself in all cases, as
the age and generation that preceded it. The vanity and presumption of
governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all
tyrannies. Man has no property in man, neither has one generation a
property in the generations that are to follow.

In the first part of the Rights of Man I have spoken of government by
hereditary succession; and I will here close the subject with an extract
from that work, which states it under the two following heads. (1)

1 The quotation, here omitted, will be found in vol. ii. of
this work, beginning with p. 364, and continuing, with a few
omissions, to the 15th line of p. 366. This "Dissertation"
was originally written for circulation in Holland, where
Paine's