l6i on the constitution. -^^'g- 8. " 



ded knees, and prottstat'ons of inviolable fidelity ? 

 Satire and declamation may paint these obvious to- 

 pics in the most dazzling colours ; but our more 

 serious thoughts will respect an useful invention, 

 that establiflies a rule of succefsion, independent of 

 the pafsions of mankind ; vind we Ihall chearfully 

 acquiesce in any expedient which deprives the multi- 

 tude of the dangerous, and, indeed, the ideal power, 

 of giving themselves a master. In the cool fliade 

 of retirement, we may easily devise imaginary 

 modes of government, in which the sceptre ftiall be 

 constantly b.^stowed on the most worthy, by the free 

 and incorrupt sutTerage of the whole comnmnity. 

 Experience overturns these airy fabrics, and teaches 

 us, that, in a large society, the election of a monarch 

 can never devolve on the wisest, or most numerous 

 part of the people. The army is the only order of 

 men sufficiently united to concur in the same senti- 

 ments, and powerful enough to impose them on the 

 rest of their fellow citizens ; but the temper of sol- 

 diers., habituated at olice to violence and slavery, fen- 

 ders them very unfit guardians of a legal, or even a 

 civil constitution. The superior prerogative of 

 birth, when it has obtained the sanction of time 

 and popular opinion, is the plainest, and least invi- 

 dious of all distinctions among mankind. The ac- 

 knowledged right extinguifhes the hopes of faction, 

 and tlie conscious security d-isarms the cruelty of the 

 monarch. To the firm establifhment of this idea, 

 we owe the peaceful succefsion and mild administra- 

 tion of European monarchies *." 

 * Gibbon, vol. i. p. 204. 



