This might be said while there existed nobles, a priesthood,
parliaments, the privileged of every kind. But at present who can resist
the Law, which is the will of all, whose execution is the interest of
all? On the contrary the existence of an hereditary prince inspires
perpetual distrust among the friends of liberty; his authority is odious
to them; in checking despotism they constantly obstruct the action of
government. Observe how feeble the executive power was found, after our
recent pretence of marrying Royalty with Liberty.
Take note, for the rest, that those who talk in this way are men who
believe that the King and the Executive Power are only one and the same
thing: readers of _La Feuille Villageoise_ are more advanced.(*)
* See No. 50.--_Author_
Others use this bad reasoning: "Were there no hereditary chief there
would be an elective chief: the citizens would side with this man or
that, and there would be a civil war at every election." In the first
place, it is certain that hereditary succession alone has produced
the civil wars of France and England; and that beyond this are the
pre-tended rights, of royal families which have twenty times drawn on
these nations the scourge of foreign wars. It is, in fine, the heredity
of crowns that has caused the troubles of Regency, which Thomas Paine
calls Monarchy at nurse.
But above all it must be said, that if there be an elective chief, that
chief will not be a king surrounded by courtiers, burdened with pomp,
inflated by idolatries, and endowed with thirty millions of money; also,
that no citizen will be tempted to injure himself by placing another
citizen, his equal, for some years in an office without limited income
and circumscribed power.
In a word, whoever demands a king demands an aristocracy, and thirty
millions of taxes. See why Franklin described Royalism as _a crime like
poisoning_.
Royalty, its fanatical eclat, its superstitious idolatry, the delusive
assumption of its necessity, all these fictions have been invented only
to obtain from men excessive taxes and voluntary servitude. Royalty
and Popery have had the same aim, have sustained themselves by the same
artifices, and crumble under the same Light.
XII. TO THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, ON THE PROSECUTION AGAINST THE SECOND PART
OF RIGHTS OF MAN.(1)