and shall form a proper balance or counterpoise to the other parts of the legislature. This chief magistrate may be either elective or hereditary, and though the former institution may, to a superficial view, appear the most advantageous, yet a more accurate inspection will discover in it greater inconveniences than in the latter, and such as are founded on causes and principles eternal and immutable. The filling of the throne in such a government is a point of too great and too general interest not to divide the whole people into factions, from whence a civil war, the greatest of ills, may be apprehended almost with certainty upon every vacancy. The prince elected must be either a foreigner or a native; the former will be ignorant of the people whom he is to govern, suspicious of his new subjects and suspected by them, giving his confidence entirely to strangers, who will have no other care but of enriching themselves in the quickest manner, while their master’s favour and authority are able to support them. A native will carry into the throne all his private animosities and friendships, and will never be regarded, in his elevation, without exciting the sentiments of envy {p233} in those who formerly considered him as their equal. Not to mention that a crown is too high a reward ever to be given to merit alone, and will always induce the candidates to employ force, or money, or intrigue to procure the votes of the electors; so that such an election will give no better chance for superior merit in the prince than if the state had trusted to birth alone for determining their sovereign.
It may therefore be pronounced as a universal axiom in politics that a hereditary prince, a nobility without vassals, and a people voting by their representatives form the best monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. But in order to prove more fully that politics admit of general truths which are invariable by the humour or education either of subject or sovereign, it may not be amiss to observe some other principles of this science which may seem to deserve that character.
It may easily be observed that though free governments have been commonly the most happy for those who partake of their freedom, yet