Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/209

Ch. 3. of different opinions. But hitory and obervation will inform us, that elections of every kind (in the preent tate of human nature) are too frequently brought about by influence, partiality, and artifice: and, even where the cae is otherwie, thee practices will be often upected, and as contantly charged upon the uccesful, by a plenetic diappointed minority. This is an evil to which all ocieties are liable; as well thoe of a private and dometic kind, as the great community of the public, which regulates and includes the ret. But in the former there is this advantage; that uch upicions, if fale, proceed no farther than jealouies and murmurs, which time will effectually uppres; and, if true, the injutice may be remedied by legal means, by an appeal to thoe tribunals to which every member of ociety has (by becoming uch) virtually engaged to ubmit. Whereas, in the great and independent ociety, which every nation compoes, there is no uperior to reort to but the law of nature; no method to redres the infringements of that law, but the actual exertion of private force. As therefore between two nations, complaining of mutual injuries, the quarrel can only be decided by the law of arms; o in one and the ame nation, when the fundamental principles of their common union are uppoed to be invaded, and more epecially when the appointment of their chief magitrate is alleged to be unduly made, the only tribunal to which the complainants can appeal is that of the God of battels, the only proces by which the appeal can be carried on is that of a civil and intetine war. An hereditary ucceion to the crown is therefore now etablihed, in this and mot other countries, in order to prevent that periodical bloodhed and miery, which the hitory of antient imperial Rome, and the more modern experience of Poland and Germany, may hew us are the conequences of elective kingdoms. 2.&ensp;, econdly, as to the particular mode of inheritance, it in general correponds with the feodal path of decents, chalked out by the common law in the ucceion to landed etates; yet with one or two material exceptions. Like them, the crown will Rh