the
ridicule of the world; and on a parity of reasoning, it is equally as
ridiculous that the same cases should happen in that part of government
which is called the Executive; yet this is the contemptible condition to
which an Executive is always subject, and which is often happening,
when it is placed in an hereditary individual called a king. When
that individual is in either of the cases before mentioned, the whole
Executive is in the same case; for himself is the whole. He is then (as
an Executive) the ridiculous picture of what a Legislature would be if
all its members were in the same case. The one is a whole made up of
parts, the other a whole without parts; and anything happening to the
one, (as a part or sec-tion of the government,) is parallel to the same
thing happening to the other.

As, therefore, an hereditary executive called a king is a perfect
absurdity in itself, any attachment to it is equally as absurd. It is
neither instinct or reason; and if this attachment is what is called
royalism in France, then is a royalist inferior in character to every
species of the animal world; for what can that being be who acts neither
by instinct nor by reason? Such a being merits rather our derision
than our pity; and it is only when it assumes to act its folly that it
becomes capable of provoking republican indignation. In every other
case it is too contemptible to excite anger. For my own part, when I
contemplate the self-evident absurdity of the thing, I can scarcely
permit myself to believe that there exists in the high-minded nation of
France such a mean and silly animal as a royalist.

As it requires but a single glance of thought to see (as is before said)
that all the parts of which government is composed must be at all times
in a state of full maturity, it was not possible that men acting under
the influence of reason, could, in forming a Constitution, admit an
hereditary Executive, any more than an hereditary Legislature. I go
therefore to examine the other cases.

In the first place, (rejecting the hereditary system,) shall the
Executive by election be an _individual or a plurality_.

An individual by election is almost as bad as the hereditary system,
except that there is always a better chance of not having an idiot. But
he will never be any thing more than a chief of a party, and none but
those of that party will have access to him. He will have no person
to consult with of a standing equal with hi