s no relation to, nor depends
upon, the civil laws of the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, or any other
nation upon earth: the municipal laws of one society having no
connexion with, or influence upon, the fundamental polity of another.
The founders of our English monarchy might perhaps, if they had
thought proper, have made it an elective monarchy: but they rather
chose, and upon good reason, to establish originally a succession by
inheritance. This has been acquiesced in by general consent; and
ripened by degrees into common law: the very same title that every
private man has to his own estate. Lands are not naturally descendible
any more than thrones: but the law has thought proper, for the benefit
and peace of the public, to establish hereditary succession in one as
well as the other.

IT must be owned, an elective monarchy seems to be the most obvious,
and best suited of any to the rational principles of government, and
the freedom of human nature: and accordingly we find from history
that, in the infancy and first rudiments of almost every state, the
leader, chief magistrate, or prince, hath usually been elective. And,
if the individuals who compose that state could always continue true
to first principles, uninfluenced by passion or prejudice, unassailed
by corruption, and unawed by violence, elective succession were as
much to be desired in a kingdom, as in other inferior communities. The
best, the wisest, and the bravest man would then be sure of receiving
that crown, which his endowments have merited; and the sense of an
unbiassed majority would be dutifully acquiesced in by the few who
were of different opinions. But history and observation will inform
us, that elections of every kind (in the present state of human
nature) are too frequently brought about by influence, partiality, and
artifice: and, even where the case is otherwise, these practices will
be often suspected, and as constantly charged upon the successful, by
a splenetic disappointed minority. This is an evil, to which all
societies are liable; as well those of a private and domestic kind, as
the great community of the public, which regulates and includes the
rest. But in the former there is this advantage; that such suspicions,
if false, proceed no farther than jealousies and murmurs, which time
will effectually suppress; and, if true, the injustice may be remedied
by legal means, by an appeal to those tribunals to which every member
of society ha