WE HAVE ADDED UNTO OUR SINS THIS EVIL, TO ASK A KING._ These
portions of scripture are direct and positive. They admit of no
equivocal construction. That the Almighty hath here entered his
protest against monarchical government, is true, or the scripture is
false. And a man hath good reason to believe that there is as much of
kingcraft, as priestcraft, in withholding the scripture from the public
in Popish countries. For monarchy in every instance is the Popery of
government.

To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession;
and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the
second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and an imposition on
posterity. For all men being originally equals, no ONE by BIRTH could
have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all
others for ever, and though himself might deserve SOME decent degree of
honours of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too
unworthy to inherit them. One of the strongest NATURAL proofs of the
folly of hereditary right in kings, is, that nature disapproves it,
otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving
mankind an ASS FOR A LION.

Secondly, as no man at first could possess any other public honours
than were bestowed upon him, so the givers of those honours could have
no power to give away the right of posterity. And though they might
say, "We choose you for OUR head," they could not, without manifest
injustice to their children, say, "that your 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
honourable origin; whereas it is more than probable, that could we take
off the dark covering of antiquities, 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
preeminence in subtlety obtained the title of chief among plunderers;