were subjected to Satan, and in the other to Sovereignty; as our innocence
was lost in the first, and our authority in the last; and as both disable
us from reassuming some former state and privilege, it unanswerably
follows that original sin and hereditary succession are parallels.
Dishonourable rank! Inglorious connection! Yet the most subtle sophist
cannot produce a juster simile.

As to usurpation, no man will be so hardy as to defend it; and that
William the Conqueror was an usurper is a fact not to be contradicted.
The plain truth is, that the antiquity of English monarchy will not
bear looking into.

But it is not so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary succession
which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and wise men
it would have the seal of divine authority, but as it opens a door
to the FOOLISH, the WICKED, and the IMPROPER, it hath in it the nature
of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign,
and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest
of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance;
and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large,
that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests,
and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant
and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

Another evil which attends hereditary succession is, that the throne
is subject to be possessed by a minor at any age; all which time
the regency, acting under the cover of a king, have every opportunity
and inducement to betray their trust. The same national misfortune happens,
when a king, worn out with age and infirmity, enters the last stage
of human weakness. In both these cases the public becomes a prey