has been said is sufficient for the intention of this work: the reader may see these questions treated more at large in many books that are well known. We shall conclude this subject with an important observation. A sovereign is undoubtedly allowed to employ ministers to ease him in the painful offices of government; but he ought never to surrender his authority to them. When a nation chuses a conductor, it is not with a view that he should deliver up his charge into other hands. Ministers ought only to be instruments in the hands of the prince; he ought constantly to direct them, and continually endeavour to know whether they act according to his intentions. If the imbecillity of age, or any infirmity, render him incapable of governing, a regent ought to be nominated, according to the laws of the state: but when once the sovereign is capable of holding the reins, let him insist on being served, but never suffer himself to be superseded. The last kings of France of the first race surrendered the government and authority to the mayors of the palace: thus becoming mere phantoms, they justly lost the title and honours of a dignity of which they had abandoned the functions. The nation has every thing to gain in crowning an all-powerful minister; for he will improve that soil as his own inheritance, which he plundered whilst he only reaped precarious advantages from it.
Of States Elective, Successive or Hereditary, and of those called Patrimonial.
We have seen in the preceding chapter, that it originally belongs to a nation to confer the supreme authority, and to chuse the person by whom it is to be governed. If it confers the sovereignty on him for his own person only, reserving to itself <24> the right of chusing a successor after the sovereign’s death, the state is elective. As soon as the prince is elected according to the laws, he enters into the possession of all the prerogatives which those laws annex to his dignity.
§57. Whether elective kings are real sovereigns.
It has been debated, whether elective kings and princes are real sovereigns. But he who lays any stress on this circumstance must have only a very confused idea of sovereignty. The manner in which a prince obtains his dignity has nothing to do with determining its nature. We must consider, first, whether the nation itself forms an independent society (see chap. I.), and secondly, what is the extent of the power it has intrusted to the prince. Whenever the chief of an independent state really represents his nation, he ought to be considered as a true sovereign (§40), even though his authority should be limited in several respects.
§58. Of successive and hereditary states.
The origin of the right of succession.
When a nation would avoid the troubles which seldom fail to accompany the election of a sovereign, it makes its choice for a long succession of years, by establishing the right of succession, or by rendering the crown hereditary in a family, according to the order and rules that appear most agreeable to that nation. The name of an Hereditary State or Kingdom is given to that where the successor is appointed by the same law that regulates the successions of individuals. The Successive Kingdom is that where a person succeeds according to a particular fundamental law of the state. Thus the lineal succession, and of males alone, is established in France.
§59. Other origins of this right.
The right of succession is not always the primitive establishment of a nation; it may have been introduced by the concession of another sovereign, and even by usurpation. But when it is supported by long possession, the people are considered as consenting to it; and this tacit consent renders it lawful, though the source be vicious. It rests then on the foundation we have already pointed out,—a foundation that alone is lawful and incapable of being shaken, and to which we must ever revert.
§60. Other sources which still amount to the same thing.
The same right, according to Grotius and the generality of writers, may be derived from other sources, as conquest, or the right of a proprietor, who, being master of a country, should invite inhabitants to settle there, and give them lands, on condition of their acknowledging him and his heirs for their sovereigns. But as it is absurd to suppose that a society of men can place themselves in subjection otherwise than with a view to their own safety and welfare, and still more that they can bind their posterity on any other footing, it ultimately amounts to the same thing; and it must still be said that the succession is established by the express will or the tacit consent of the nation, for the welfare and safety of the state.
§61. A nation may change the order of the succession.
It thus remains an undeniable truth, that in all cases the succession is established or received only with a view to the public welfare and the general safety. If it happened then that the order established in this respect became destructive to the state, the nation would certainly have a right to change it by a new law. <25> Salus populi suprema lex,—the safety of the people is the supreme law; and this law is agreeable to the strictest justice,—the people having united in society only with a view to their safety and greater advantage.*
This pretended proprietory right attributed to princes is a chimera produced by an abuse which its supporters would fain make of the laws respecting private inheritances. The state neither is nor can be a patrimony, since the end of patrimony is the advantage of the possessor, whereas the prince is established only for the advantage of the state.* The consequence is evident: if the nation plainly perceives that the heir of her prince would be a pernicious sovereign, she has a right to exclude him.
The authors whom we oppose, grant this right to a despotic prince, while they refuse it to nations. This is because they consider such a prince as a real proprietor of the empire, and will not acknowledge that the care of their own safety, and the right to govern themselves, still essentially belong to the society, although they have intrusted them, even without any express reserve, to a monarch and his heirs. In their opinion, the kingdom is the inheritance of the prince, in the same manner as his field and his flocks,—a maxim injurious to human nature, and which they would not have dared to advance in an enlightened age, if it had not the support of an authority which too often proves stronger than reason and justice.
A nation may, for the same reason, oblige one branch who removes to another country, to renounce all claim to the crown, as a daughter who marries a foreign prince. These renunciations, required or approved by the state, are perfectly valid, since they are equivalent to a law that such persons and their posterity should be excluded from the throne. Thus the laws of England have for ever rejected every Roman Catholic. “Thus a law of Russia, made at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, most <26> wisely excludes from the possession of the crown every heir possessed of another monarchy; and thus the law of Portugal disqualifies every foreigner who lays claim to the crown by right of blood.”*
Some celebrated authors, in other respects very learned and judicious, have then deviated from the true principles in treating of renunciations. They have
