As this is ever the case, and as every generation is equal in rights to another, it consequently follows, that there cannot be a right in any to establish government by hereditary succession, because it would be supposing itself possessed of a right superior to the rest, namely, that of commanding by its own authority how the world shall be hereafter governed and who shall govern it. Every age and generation is, and must be, (as a matter of right,) as free to act for itself in all cases, as the age and generation that preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man, neither has one generation a property in the generations that are to follow. In the first part of the Rights of Man I have spoken of government by hereditary succession; and I will here close the subject with an extract from that work, which states it under the two following heads. (1) 1 The quotation, here omitted, will be found in vol. ii. of this work, beginning with p. 364, and continuing, with a few omissions, to the 15th line of p. 366. This "Dissertation" was originally written for circulation in Holland, where Paine's "Rights of Man" was not well known.--_Editor._ ***** The history of the English parliament furnishes an example of this kind; and which merits to be recorded, as being the greatest instance of legislative ignorance and want of principle that is to be found in any country. The case is as follows: The English parliament of 1688, imported a man and his wife from Holland, _William and Mary_, and made them king and queen of England. (2) Having done this, the said parliament made a law to convey the government of the country to the heirs of William and Mary, in the following words: "We, the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons, do, in the name of the people of England, most humbly and faithfully submit _ourselves, our heirs, and posterities_, to William and Mary, _their heirs and posterities_, for ever." And in a subsequent law, as quoted by Edmund Burke, the said parliament, in the name of the people of England then living, _binds the said people, their heirs and posterities, to William and Mary, their heirs and posterities, to the end of time_. 2 "The Bill of Rights (temp. William III.) shows that the Lords and Commons met not in Parliament but in convention, that they declared against James II., and in favour of William III. The latter was accepted as sovereign, and, when monarch. Acta of Parliament were passed confirming what had been done."--Joseph Fisher in Notes and Queries (London), May 2,1874. This does not affect Paine's argument, as a Convention could have no more right to bind the future than a Parliament.--_Editor._.