Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/278

260 the strongest to restrain their excesses, Be goes on to enquire whether dominion should be transmitted by hereditary succession or whether a fresh choice should take place at every vacancy. On the one hand it may be urged that the security of tenure possessed by an hereditary monarch, and the certainty he has of handing down his dominion to his son, is an inducement to him to play the tyrant; on the other hand this very fact may increase his care for his dominion and cause him to make the best use of it. It is here assumed, as regularly in the middle ages, that a prince whom the community has elected, it may depose; while an hereditary monarch, according to the common belief, could not be legally deprived of his power. Again, in favour of the elective principle, a it may be said that an election in which all qualified persons take part must be right. But Wycliffe, as we have seen, has no opinion of the value of the popular vote: since the fall of man, he says, it generally happens that the electing community is, altogether or in its greater part, infected by crime; and thus it happens that it is at fault in elections, even as in other acts alike concerning God and the common wealth. Wycliffe argues at length on both sides; incidently he discloses a good deal of political acuteness, and he leans towards a preference for the hereditary principle: but no experience or historical observation will induce him to forego the application here also of his first doctrine; and thus he decides that neither heredity nor election furnishes any title sufficient for the foundation of human dominion, without the anterior condition of grace in the person so elected or so succeeding. Wherefore it appears to me that the discreet theologian will determine nothing rashly as touching these laws, but will affirm according to law that it were better that all things should be had in common.