by
hereditary succession; and proceed to the second, that of government
by election and representation; or, as it may be concisely expressed,
_representative government_, in contra-distinction to _hereditary
government_.

Reasoning by exclusion, if _hereditary government_ has not a right to
exist, and that it has not is proveable, _representative government_ is
admitted of course.

In contemplating government by election and representation, we amuse
not ourselves in enquiring when or how, or by what right, it began. Its
origin is ever in view. Man is himself the origin and the evidence
of the right. It appertains to him in right of his existence, and his
person is the title deed.(1)

The true and only true basis of representative government is equality of
Rights. Every man has a right to one vote, and no more, in the choice
of representatives. The rich have no more right to exclude the poor from
the right of voting, or of electing and being elected, than the poor
have to exclude the rich; and wherever it is attempted, or proposed, on
either side, it is a question of force and not of right. Who is he that
would exclude another? That other has a right to exclude him.

That which is now called aristocracy implies an inequality of rights;
but who are the persons that have a right to establish this inequality?
Will the rich exclude themselves? No. Will the poor exclude themselves?
No. By what right then can any be excluded? It would be a question, if
any man or class of men have a right to exclude themselves; but, be this
as it may, they cannot have the right to exclude another. The poor will
not delegate such a right to the rich, nor the rich to the poor, and to
assume it is not only to assume arbitrary power, but to assume a right
to commit robbery. Personal rights, of which the right of voting for
representatives is one, are a species of property of the most sacred
kind: and he that would employ his pecuniary property, or presume upon
the influence it gives him, to dispossess or rob another of his property
of rights, uses that pecuniary property as he would use fire-arms, and
merits to have it taken from him.

1 "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for
among old parchments or musty records. They are written as
with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the
hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured
by mortal power."--Alexander Hamilton, 1775. (Cf.