ould paint human nature with a baseness of
heart, an hypocrisy, from which all must recoil and humanity disavow, it
would be the portraiture of kings, their ministers and courtiers.

And why should it not be so? What should such a monstrosity produce
but miseries and crimes? What is monarchy? It has been finely disguised,
and the people familiarized with the odious title: in its real sense the
word signifies _the absolute power of one single individual_, who may
with impunity be stupid, treacherous, tyrannical, etc. Is it not an
insult to nations to wish them so governed?

Government by a single individual is vicious in itself, independently of
the individual's vices. For however little a State, the prince is
nearly always too small: where is the proportion between one man and the
affairs of a whole nation?

True, some men of genius have been seen under the diadem; but the evil
is then even greater: the ambition of such a man impels him to conquest
and despotism, his subjects soon have to lament his glory, and sing
their _Te-deums_ while perishing with hunger. Such is the history of
Louis XIV. and so many others.

But if ordinary men in power repay you with incapacity or with princely
vices? But those who come to the front in monarchies are frequently
mere mean mischief-makers, commonplace knaves, petty intriguers, whose
small wits, which in courts reach large places, serve only to display
their ineptitude in public, as soon as they appear. (*) In short,
monarchs do nothing, and their ministers do evil: this is the history of
all monarchies.

But if Royalty as such is baneful, as hereditary succession it is
equally revolting and ridiculous. What! there exists among my kind a man
who pretends that he is born to govern me? Whence derived he such right?
From his and my ancestors, says he. But how could they transmit to him
a right they did not possess? Man has no authority over generations
unborn. I cannot be the slave of the dead, more than of the living.
Suppose that instead of our posterity, it was we who should succeed
ourselves: we should not to-day be able to despoil ourselves of the
rights which would belong to us in our second life: for a stronger
reason we cannot so despoil others.

An hereditary crown! A transmissible throne! What a notion! With even a
little reflexion, can any one tolerate it? Should human beings then be
the property of certain individuals, born or to be born? Are we then to
treat our des