Page:Dissertation on First-principles of Government facsimile.pdf/18

 possessed of a right superior to the rest, namely, that of commanding by its own authority how the world shall be hereafter governed, and who shall govern it. Every age and generation is and must be (as a matter of right) as free to act for itself in all cases, as the age and generation that preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyranies. Man has no property in man, neither has one generation a property in the generations that are to follow.

In the first part of Rights of Man I have spoken of government by hereditary succession; and I will here close the subject with an extract from that work, which states it under the two following heads.

“First, of the right of any family to establish itself with hereditary power.

“Secondly, of the right of a nation to establish a particular family.

“With respect to the first of those heads, that of a family establishing itself with hereditary powers on its own authority independantindependent [sic] of the nation, all men will concur in calling it deposition, and it would be trespassing on their understanding to attempt to prove it.

“But the second head, that of a nation, that is, of a generation for the time being, establishing a particular family with hereditary powers, it does not present itself as despotism on the first reflection; but if men will permit a second reflection to take place, and carry that reflection forward, even but one remove out of their own persons to that of their offspring, they will then see, that hereditary succession