aid parliament, in the name of the people of England
then living, _binds the said people, their heirs and posterities, to
William and Mary, their heirs and posterities, to the end of time_.

2 "The Bill of Rights (temp. William III.) shows that the
Lords and Commons met not in Parliament but in convention,
that they declared against James II., and in favour of
William III. The latter was accepted as sovereign, and, when
monarch. Acta of Parliament were passed confirming what had
been done."--Joseph Fisher in Notes and Queries (London),
May 2,1874. This does not affect Paine's argument, as a
Convention could have no more right to bind the future than
a Parliament.--_Editor._.

It is not sufficient that we laugh at the ignorance of such law-makers;
it is necessary that we reprobate their want of principle. The
constituent assembly of France, 1789, fell into the same vice as the
parliament of England had done, and assumed to establish an hereditary
succession in the family of the Capets, as an act of the constitution
of that year. That every nation, _for the time being_, has a right to
govern itself as it pleases, must always be admitted; but government by
hereditary succession is government for another race of people, and
not for itself; and as those on whom it is to operate are not yet in
existence, or are minors, so neither is the right in existence to set it
up for them, and to assume such a right is treason against the right of
posterity.

I here close the arguments on the first head, that of government by
hereditary succession; and proceed to the second, that of government
by election and representation; or, as it may be concisely expressed,
_representative government_, in contra-distinction to _hereditary
government_.

Reasoning by exclusion, if _hereditary government_ has not a right to
exist, and that it has not is proveable, _representative government_ is
admitted of course.

In contemplating government by election and representation, we amuse
not ourselves in enquiring when or how, or by what right, it began. Its
origin is ever in view. Man is himself the origin and the evidence
of the right. It appertains to him in right of his existence, and his
person is the title deed.(1)

The true and only true basis of representative government is equality of
Rights. Every man has a right to one vote, and no more, in the choice
of representatives. The rich have no more