The questions with regard to public property have filled infinite volumes of law and philosophy, if in both we add the commentators to the original text; and in the end we may safely pronounce that many of the rules there established are uncertain, ambiguous, and arbitrary. The like opinion may be formed with regard to the successions and rights of princes and forms of government. Many cases no doubt occur, especially in the infancy of any government, which admit of no determination from the laws of justice and equity; and our historian Rapin allows that the controversy between Edward III. and Philip de Valois was of this nature, and could be decided only by an appeal to heaven—that is, by war and violence.
Who shall tell me whether Germanicus or Drusus ought to have succeeded Tiberius had he died while they were both alive without naming either of them for his successor? Ought the right of adoption to be received as equivalent to that of blood in a nation where it had the same effect in private families, and had already in two instances taken place in the public? Ought Germanicus to be esteemed the eldest son because he was born before Drusus, or the {p189} younger because he was adopted after the birth