All the civil wars in France arose from the hereditary system; they were either produced by hereditary claims, or by the imperfection of the hereditary form, which admits of regencies or monarchy at nurse.With respect to England, its history is full of the same misfortunes.The contests for succession between the houses of York and Lancaster lasted a whole century; and others of a similar nature have renewed themselves since that period.Those of 1715 and 1745 were of the same kind.The succession war for the crown of Spain embroiled almost half Europe.The disturbances of Holland are generated from the hereditaryship of the Stadtholder.Agovernment calling itself free, with an hereditary office, is like a thorn in the flesh, that produces a fermentation which endeavours to discharge it.
But I might go further, and place also foreign wars, of whatever kind, to the same cause.It is by adding the evil of hereditary succession to that of monarchy, that a permanent family interest is created, whose constant objects are dominion and revenue.
Poland, though an elective monarchy, has had fewer wars than those which are hereditary; and it is the only government that has made a voluntary essay, though but a small one, to reform the condition of the country.
Having thus glanced at a few of the defects of the old, or hereditary systems of government, let us compare it with the new, or representative system.
The representative system takes society and civilisation for its basis;nature, reason, and experience, for its guide.
Experience, in all ages, and in all countries, has demonstrated that it is impossible to control Nature in her distribution of mental powers.She gives them as she pleases.Whatever is the rule by which she, apparently to us, scatters them among mankind, that rule remains a secret to man.It would be as ridiculous to attempt to fix the hereditaryship of human beauty, as of wisdom.
Whatever wisdom constituently is, it is like a seedless plant; it may be reared when it appears, but it cannot be voluntarily produced.There is always a sufficiency somewhere in the general mass of society for all purposes; but with respect to the parts of society, it is continually changing its place.It rises in one to-day, in another to-morrow, and has most probably visited in rotation every family of the earth, and again withdrawn.
As this is in the order of nature, the order of government must necessarily follow it, or government will, as we see it does, degenerate into ignorance.The hereditary system, therefore, is as repugnant to human wisdom as to human rights; and is as absurd as it is unjust.
As the republic of letters brings forward the best literary productions, by giving to genius a fair and universal chance; so the representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom from where it can be found.I smile to myself when I contemplate the ridiculous insignificance into which literature and all the sciences would sink, were they made hereditary; and I carry the same idea into governments.
An hereditary governor is as inconsistent as an hereditary author.I know not whether Homer or Euclid had sons; but I will venture an opinion that if they had, and had left their works unfinished, those sons could not have completed them.
Do we need a stronger evidence of the absurdity of hereditary government than is seen in the descendants of those men, in any line of life, who once were famous? Is there scarcely an instance in which there is not a total reverse of the character? It appears as if the tide of mental faculties flowed as far as it could in certain channels, and then forsook its course, and arose in others.How irrational then is the hereditary system, which establishes channels of power, in company with which wisdom refuses to flow! By continuing this absurdity, man is perpetually in contradiction with himself; he accepts, for a king, or a chief magistrate, or a legislator, a person whom he would not elect for a constable.
It appears to general observation, that revolutions create genius and talents; but those events do no more than bring them forward.There is existing in man, a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition, to the grave.As it is to the advantage of society that the whole of its faculties should be employed, the construction of government ought to be such as to bring forward, by a quiet and regular operation, all that extent of capacity which never fails to appear in revolutions.
This cannot take place in the insipid state of hereditary government, not only because it prevents, but because it operates to benumb.When the mind of a nation is bowed down by any political superstition in its government, such as hereditary succession is, it loses a considerable portion of its powers on all other subjects and objects.Hereditary succession requires the same obedience to ignorance, as to wisdom; and when once the mind can bring itself to pay this indiscriminate reverence, it descends below the stature of mental manhood.It is fit to be great only in little things.It acts a treachery upon itself, and suffocates the sensations that urge the detection.
Though the ancient governments present to us a miserable picture of the condition of man, there is one which above all others exempts itself from the general description.I mean the democracy of the Athenians.We see more to admire, and less to condemn, in that great, extraordinary people, than in anything which history affords.
Mr.Burke is so little acquainted with constituent principles of government, that he confounds democracy and representation together.Representation was a thing unknown in the ancient democracies.
