s it is unjust.

As the republic of letters brings forward the best literary productions,
by giving to genius a fair and universal chance; so the representative
system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by
collecting wisdom from where it can be found. I smile to myself when I
contemplate the ridiculous insignificance into which literature and all
the sciences would sink, were they made hereditary; and I carry the same
idea into governments. An hereditary governor is as inconsistent as an
hereditary author. I know not whether Homer or Euclid had sons; but
I will venture an opinion that if they had, and had left their works
unfinished, those sons could not have completed them.

Do we need a stronger evidence of the absurdity of hereditary government
than is seen in the descendants of those men, in any line of life, who
once were famous? Is there scarcely an instance in which there is not
a total reverse of the character? It appears as if the tide of mental
faculties flowed as far as it could in certain channels, and then
forsook its course, and arose in others. How irrational then is the
hereditary system, which establishes channels of power, in company
with which wisdom refuses to flow! By continuing this absurdity, man is
perpetually in contradiction with himself; he accepts, for a king, or a
chief magistrate, or a legislator, a person whom he would not elect for
a constable.

It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and
talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward. There is
existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which,
unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that
condition, to the grave. As it is to the advantage of society that
the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of
government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular
operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in
revolutions.

This cannot take place in the insipid state of hereditary government,
not only because it prevents, but because it operates to benumb. When
the mind of a nation is bowed down by any political superstition in its
government, such as hereditary succession is, it loses a considerable
portion of its powers on all other subjects and objects. Hereditary
succession requires the same obedience to ignorance, as to wisdom;
and when once the mind can bring itself to pay thi