But to whom is allegiance due? And who are our lawful sovereigns? This question is often the most difficult of any, and liable to infinite discussions. When people are so happy that they can answer, “Our present sovereign, who inherits, in a direct line, from ancestors that have governed us for many ages,” this answer admits of no reply, even though historians, in tracing up to the remotest antiquity the origin of that royal family, may find, as commonly happens, that its first authority was derived from usurpation and violence. It is confessed that private justice, or the abstinence from the properties of others, is a most cardinal virtue; yet reason tells us that there is no property in durable objects, such as lands or houses, when carefully examined in passing from hand to hand, but must in some period have been founded on fraud and injustice. The necessities of human society, neither in private nor public life, will allow of such an accurate inquiry; and there is no virtue or moral duty but what may with facility be refined away if we indulge in a false philosophy, in sifting and scrutinizing it, by every captious rule of logic, in every light or position in which it may be placed. 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 younger because he was adopted after the birth of his brother? Ought the right of the elder to be regarded in a nation where the eldest brother had no advantage in the succession of private families? Ought the Roman Empire at that time to be esteemed hereditary because of two examples, or ought it even so early to be regarded as belonging to the stronger or present possessor as being founded on so recent a usurpation?