d wisdom, in short, every
quality good or bad, is put on the same level. Kings succeed each other,
not as rationals, but as animals. It signifies not what their mental or
moral characters are. Can we then be surprised at the abject state of
the human mind in monarchical countries, when the government itself is
formed on such an abject levelling system?--It has no fixed character.
To-day it is one thing; to-morrow it is something else. It changes with
the temper of every succeeding individual, and is subject to all the
varieties of each. It is government through the medium of passions and
accidents. It appears under all the various characters of childhood,
decrepitude, dotage, a thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in
crutches. It reverses the wholesome order of nature. It occasionally
puts children over men, and the conceits of nonage over wisdom and
experience. In short, we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of
government, than hereditary succession, in all its cases, presents.

Could it be made a decree in nature, or an edict registered in heaven,
and man could know it, that virtue and wisdom should invariably
appertain to hereditary succession, the objection to it would be
removed; but when we see that nature acts as if she disowned and sported
with the hereditary system; that the mental character of successors, in
all countries, is below the average of human understanding; that one is
a tyrant, another an idiot, a third insane, and some all three together,
it is impossible to attach confidence to it, when reason in man has
power to act.

It is not to the Abbe Sieyes that I need apply this reasoning; he has
already saved me that trouble by giving his own opinion upon the
case. "If it be asked," says he, "what is my opinion with respect to
hereditary right, I answer without hesitation, That in good theory, an
hereditary transmission of any power of office, can never accord with
the laws of a true representation. Hereditaryship is, in this sense, as
much an attaint upon principle, as an outrage upon society. But let
us," continues he, "refer to the history of all elective monarchies and
principalities: is there one in which the elective mode is not worse
than the hereditary succession?"

As to debating on which is the worst of the two, it is admitting both
to be bad; and herein we are agreed. The preference which the Abbe has
given, is a condemnation of the thing that he prefers. Such a mode of
reasoning on