that such governments as have hitherto existed in the
world would have commenced by any other means than a total violation of
every principle, sacred and moral. The obscurity in which the origin of
all the present old governments is buried implies the iniquity and
disgrace with which they began. What scenes of horror present themselves
in contemplating the character and reviewing the history of such
governments! If we would delineate human nature with a baseness of heart
and hypocrisy of countenance that reflection would shudder at and
humanity disown, they are kings, courts, and cabinets that must sit for
the portrait. Man, naturally as he is, with all his faults about him, is
not up to the character.

Government on the old system is an assumption of power, for the
aggrandisement of itself; on the new a delegation of power for the
common benefit of society. The one now called the old is hereditary,
either in whole or in part, and the new is entirely representative. It
rejects all hereditary government:

First, as being an imposition on mankind.

Secondly, as inadequate to the purposes for which government is
necessary.

All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny. To inherit a
government is to inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds.
Kings succeed each other, not as rationals, but as animals. It signifies
not what their mental or moral characters are. Monarchical government
appears under all the various characters of childhood, decrepitude,
dotage; a thing at nurse, in leading-strings, or in crutches. In short,
we cannot conceive a more ridiculous figure of government than
hereditary succession. By continuing this absurdity, man is perpetually
in contradiction with himself; he may accept for a king, or a chief
magistrate, or a legislator a person whom he would not elect for a
constable.

The representative system takes society and civilisation for its basis;
nature, reason, and experience for its guide. The original simple
democracy was society governing itself without the aid of secondary
means. By ingrafting representation upon democracy we arrive at a system
of government capable of embracing and confederating all the various
interests and every extent of territory and population; and that also
with advantages as much inferior to hereditary government, as the
republic of letters is to hereditary literature.

Considering government in the only light in which it should be
considered, that