and who by increasing in power, and extending his depredations,
overawed the quiet and defenseless 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 complemental; but as few or no
records were extant in those days, and traditional 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 favour 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
honourable one. A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and
establishing himself king of England against the consent of the
natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original. It
certainly hath no divinity in it. However, it is needless to spend
much time in exposing the folly of hereditary right; if there are any
so weak as to believe it, let them promiscuously worship the ass and
lion, and welcome. I shall neither copy their humility, nor disturb
their devotion.

Yet I should be glad to ask how they suppose kings came at first? The
question admits but of three answers, viz. either by lot, by election,
or by usurpation. If the first king was taken by lot, it establishes a
precedent for the next, which excludes hereditary succession. Saul was
by lot, yet the succession was not hereditary, neither does it appear
from that transaction there was any intention it ever should be. If
the first king of any country was by election, that likewise
establishes a precedent for the next; for to say, that the RIGHT of all
future generations is taken