whatever age, from just born to just dying. Of these, one part will be
minors, and the other aged. The average of life is not exactly the same
in every climate and country, but in general, the minority in years are
the majority in numbers; that is, the number of persons under twenty-one
years, is greater than the number of persons above that age. This
difference in number is not necessary to the establishment of the
principle I mean to lay down, but it serves to shew the justice of it
more strongly. The principle would be equally as good, if the majority
in years were also the majority in numbers.

The rights of minors are as sacred as the rights of the aged. The
difference is altogether in the different age of the two parties, and
nothing in the nature of the rights; the rights are the same rights;
and are to be preserved inviolate for the inheritance of the minors when
they shall come of age. During the minority of minors their rights are
under the sacred guardianship of the aged. The minor cannot surrender
them; the guardian cannot dispossess him; consequently, the aged part
of a nation, who are the law-makers for the time being, and who, in the
march of life are but a few years ahead of those who are yet minors, and
to whom they must shortly give place, have not and cannot have the right
to make a law to set up and establish hereditary government, or, to
speak more distinctly, _an hereditary succession of governors_; because
it is an attempt to deprive every minor in the nation, at the time such
a law is made, of his inheritance of rights when he shall come of age,
and to subjugate him to a system of government to which, during his
minority, he could neither consent nor object.

If a person who is a minor at the time such a law is proposed, had
happened to have been born a few years sooner, so as to be of the age of
twenty-one years at the time of proposing it, his right to have objected
against it, to have exposed the injustice and tyrannical principles of
it, and to have voted against it, will be admitted on all sides. If,
therefore, the law operates to prevent his exercising the same rights
after he comes of age as he would have had a right to exercise had he
been of age at the time, it is undeniably a law to take away and annul
the rights of every person in the nation who shall be a minor at the
time of making such a law, and consequently the right to make it cannot
exist.

I come now to speak of government by