our children and your
children's children shall reign over OURS for ever." Because such
an unwise, unjust, unnatural compact might (perhaps) in the next
succession put them under the government of a rogue or a fool. Most
wise men, in their private sentiments, have ever treated hereditary
right with contempt; yet it is one of those evils, which when once
established is not easily removed; many submit from fear, others from
superstition, and the more powerful part shares with the king the
plunder of the rest.

This is supposing the present race of kings in the world to have
had an honorable origin; whereas it is more than probable, that could
we take off the dark covering of antiquity, and trace them to their
first rise, that we should find the first of them nothing better than
the principal ruffian of some restless gang, whose savage manners or
pre-eminence in subtility obtained him the title of chief among
plunderers; and who by increasing in power, and extending his
depredations, over-awed the quiet and defenceless to purchase their
safety by frequent contributions. Yet his electors could have no idea
of giving hereditary right to his descendants, because such a
perpetual exclusion of themselves was incompatible with the free and
unrestrained principles they professed to live by. Wherefore,
hereditary succession in the early ages of monarchy could not take
place as a matter of claim, but as something casual or complimental;
but as few or no records were extant in those days, and traditionary
history stuffed with fables, it was very easy, after the lapse of a
few generations, to trump up some superstitious tale, conveniently
timed, Mahomet like, to cram hereditary right down the throats of the
vulgar. Perhaps the disorders which threatened, or seemed to
threaten, on the decease of a leader and the choice of a new one (for
elections among ruffians could not be very orderly) induced many at
first to favor hereditary pretensions; by which means it happened, as
it hath happened since, that what at first was submitted to as a
convenience, was afterwards claimed as a right.

England, since the conquest, hath known some few good monarchs, but
groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones; yet no man in his
senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very
honorable one. A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and
establishing himself king of England against the consent of the
natives, is in p