Suppose a usurper, after having banished his lawful prince and royal family, should establish his dominion for ten or a dozen years in any country, and should preserve such exact discipline in his troops and so regular a disposition in his garrisons that no insurrection had ever been raised, or even murmur heard, against his administration, can it be asserted that the people, who in their hearts abhor his treason, have tacitly consented to his authority and promised him allegiance merely because, from necessity, they live under his dominion? Suppose again their natural prince restored, by means of an army which he assembles in foreign countries, they receive him with joy and exultation, and show plainly with what reluctance they had submitted to any other yoke. I may now ask upon what foundation the prince’s title stands? Not on popular consent surely; for though the people willingly acquiesce in his authority, they never imagine that their consent makes him sovereign. They consent because they apprehend him to be already, by birth, their lawful sovereign. And as to that tacit consent, which may now be inferred from their living under his dominion, this is no more than what they formerly gave to the tyrant and usurper. When we assert that all lawful government arises from the people, we certainly do them more honour than they deserve, or even expect and desire from us. After the Roman dominions became too unwieldy for the republic to govern, the people over the whole known world were extremely grateful to Augustus for that authority which, by violence, he had established over them; and they showed an equal disposition to submit to the successor whom he left them by his last will and testament. It was afterwards their misfortune that there never was in one family any long, regular succession; but that their line of princes was continually broke, either by private assassination or public rebellion. The prætorean bands, on the failure of every family, set up one emperor, the legions in the East a second, those in Germany perhaps a third; and the sword alone could decide the controversy. The condition of the people in that mighty monarchy was to be lamented, not because the choice of the emperor was never left to them, for that was impracticable, but because they never fell under any succession of masters, who might regularly follow each other. As to the violence and wars and bloodshed occasioned by every new settlement, those were not blameable, because they were inevitable.