Historical voices

The hereditary system, therefore, is as repugnant to human wisdom as to human rights; and is as absurd as it is unjust.

It would be as ridiculous to attempt to fix the hereditaryship of human beauty, as of wisdom.

Experience, in all ages, and in all countries, has demonstrated that it is impossible to control Nature in her distribution of mental powers.

The representative system takes society and civilisation for its basis; nature, reason, and experience, for its guide.

It is by adding the evil of hereditary succession to that of monarchy, that a permanent family interest is created, whose constant objects are dominion and revenue.

A government calling itself free, with an hereditary office, is like a thorn in the flesh, that produces a fermentation which endeavours to discharge it.

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.

This sort of superstition may last a few years more, but it cannot long resist the awakened reason and interest of man.

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.

And where wisdom and abilities are not necessary, such an office, whatever it may be, is superfluous or insignificant.

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.

Hereditaryship is, in this sense, as much an attaint upon principle, as an outrage upon society.

In short, we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of government, than hereditary succession, in all its cases, presents.

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.

Kings succeed each other, not as rationals, but as animals.

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 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…

To inherit a government, is to inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds.

An heritable crown, or an heritable throne, or by what other fanciful name such things may be called, have no other significant explanation than that mankind are heritable property.

All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny.

Man has no authority over posterity in matters of personal right; and, therefore, no man, or body of men, had, or can have, a right to set up hereditary government.

The one measures its prosperity, by the quantity of revenue it extorts; the other proves its excellence, by the small quantity of taxes it requires.

The one encourages national prejudices; the other promotes universal society, as the means of universal commerce.

The former supports itself by keeping up a system of war; the latter promotes a system of peace, as the true means of enriching a nation.