Whether one jests or reasons, there is found in this idea of hereditary royalty only folly and shame. What then is this office, which may be filled by infants or idiots? Some talent is required to be a simple workman; to be a king there is need to have only the human shape, to be a living automaton. We are astonished when reading that the Egyptians placed on the throne a flint, and called it their king. We smile at the dog Barkouf, sent by an Asiatic despot to govern one of his provinces.(*) But mon-archs of this kind are less mischievous and less absurd than those before whom whole peoples prostrate themselves. The flint and the dog at least imposed on nobody. None ascribed to them qualities or characters they did not possess. They were not styled 'Father of the People,'--though this were hardly more ridiculous than to give that title to a rattle-head whom inheritance crowns at eighteen. Better a mute than an animate idol. Why, there can hardly be cited an instance of a great man having children worthy of him, yet you will have the royal function pass from father to son! As well declare that a wise man's son will be wise. A king is an administrator, and an hereditary administrator is as absurd as an author by birthright. * See the first year of La Feuille Villageoise, No. 42.-- Author. [Cf. Montaigne's Essays, chap. xii.--_Editor._] Royalty is thus as contrary to common sense as to com-mon right. But it would be a plague even if no more than an absurdity; for a people who can bow down in honor of a silly thing is a debased people. Can they be fit for great affairs who render equal homage to vice and virtue, and yield the same submission to ignorance and wisdom? Of all institutions, none has caused more intellectual degeneracy. This explains the often-remarked abjectness of character under monarchies. Such is also the effect of this contagious institution that it renders equality impossible, and draws in its train the presumption and the evils of "Nobility." If you admit inheritance of an office, why not that of a distinction? The Nobility's heritage asks only homage, that of the Crown commands submission. When a man says to me, 'I am born illustrious,' I merely smile; when he says 'I am born your master,' I set my foot on him.