Government ought to be a thing always in full maturity.It ought to be so constructed as to be superior to all the accidents to which individual man is subject; and, therefore, hereditary succession, by being subject to them all, is the most irregular and imperfect of all the systems of government.
We have heard the Rights of Man called a levelling system; but the only system to which the word levelling is truly applicable, is the hereditary monarchical system.It is a system of mental levelling.
It indiscriminately admits every species of character to the same authority.Vice and virtue, ignorance and 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 such a subject is inadmissible, because it finally amounts to an accusation upon Providence, as if she had left to man no other choice with respect to government than between two evils, the best of which he admits to be "an attaint upon principle, and an outrage upon society."Passing over, for the present, all the evils and mischiefs which monarchy has occasioned in the world, nothing can more effectually prove its uselessness in a state of civil government, than making it hereditary.Would we make any office hereditary that required wisdom and abilities to fill it? And where wisdom and abilities are not necessary, such an office, whatever it may be, is superfluous or insignificant.
Hereditary succession is a burlesque upon monarchy.It puts it in the most ridiculous light, by presenting it as an office which any child or idiot may fill.It requires some talents to be a common mechanic; but to be a king requires only the animal figure of man- a sort of breathing automaton.This sort of superstition may last a few years more, but it cannot long resist the awakened reason and interest of man.
As to Mr.Burke, he is a stickler for monarchy, not altogether as a pensioner, if he is one, which I believe, but as a political man.He has taken up a contemptible opinion of mankind, who, in their turn, are taking up the same of him.He considers them as a herd of beings that must be governed by fraud, effigy, and show;and an idol would be as good a figure of monarchy with him, as a man.I will, however, do him the justice to say that, with respect to America, he has been very complimentary.He always contended, at least in my hearing, that the people of America were more enlightened than those of England, or of any country in Europe; and that therefore the imposition of show was not necessary in their governments.
Though the comparison between hereditary and elective monarchy, which the Abbe has made, is unnecessary to the case, because the representative system rejects both: yet, were I to make the comparison, I should decide contrary to what he has done.
The civil wars which have originated from contested hereditary claims, are more numerous, and have been more dreadful, and of longer continuance, than those which have been occasioned by election.
