Thomas Paine, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
Reason alone condemns it, and the proof is not hard to carry. Take the hereditary principle first, since the monarchy stands or falls on it. If it were possible for a man to know that virtue and wisdom must invariably descend with the crown, the objection would be removed. But nature acts as if she disowned the whole system: the mental character of successors, in every country, is below the average of human understanding; one is a tyrant, another an idiot, a third insane, and some all three together.1
Nobody would make an office hereditary if it required wisdom and abilities to fill it, and where wisdom and abilities are not required, the office is superfluous. It takes some talent to be a common mechanic; to be a king requires only the animal figure of man, a breathing automaton.2 The workable-constitution defence assumes the English settlement binds those who come after.
Wrongs cannot have a legal descent. A cannot make a will to take from B his property and give it to C, yet that is exactly how hereditary succession operates: a former generation makes a will to strip the rights of the commencing generation and all future ones, and the heir then comes forward and tells them their rights are already bequeathed to him.3
I called that an absurdity when Mr. Burke attempted it in the name of 1688, and I call it one now. The children who will soon be men have a right we have no authority to sell, and to transmit them as a vile herd to masters whose vices are all that can be foreseen is an injustice done to the unborn.4 As for the antiquity that is supposed to sanctify the thing, I asked in Common Sense how kings came at first, and the question admits only three answers: lot, election, or usurpation.
Lot and election set a precedent for the next choice, which excludes succession by birth; and to say the first electors took away the right of all future generations is to adopt the doctrine of original sin, which is no glory to the cause. Usurpation no man will defend, and William the Conqueror was an usurper, a French bastard landing with an armed banditti.
The antiquity of English monarchy will not bear looking into.5 The part of this that bears on your question about workability is the Executive. Each part of a government should be so constructed as to be in perpetual maturity. We should laugh at a Legislature that might be all children in the cradle, or all sick, insane or tottering at the same time.
Yet an Executive placed in an hereditary individual is always subject to exactly that condition, for the king is the whole of it; he is a whole without parts.6 A constitution that works only when providence happens to supply a competent child of the right family is not working. It is being lucky. On France, I did not need the Revolution to prove the principle; the principle came first and the Revolution was the attempt to build on it.
In the Declaration of Rights the French had everything required, and I held that their constitution would deserve the name of a civic Empire only when conformable to that Declaration, since monarchy and hereditary succession are incompatible with the basis of the constitution itself.7 I judged the Revolution by that measure. Even the Abbé Sieyes conceded that in good theory hereditary transmission of power can never accord with true representation, and that it is as much an attaint upon principle as an outrage upon society. To argue only over which of two evils is the lesser is to admit both are bad, and here we agree.8
Government is of human making and belongs to the living. No man has a right to rule by birth any more than to be a hereditary judge or a hereditary mathematician; the first kings were the leaders of banditti, and the succession of the Conqueror is a French bastard landing with an armed gang.910 The English constitution is not a model but the remains of two tyrannies, monarchy and aristocracy, with a republican part, the Commons, which alone does anything.
The representative system is the only form in which a whole nation can govern itself, and it is as superior to monarchy as the alphabet to hieroglyphics. The French Revolution was the first attempt to found a government on this principle, and he judged it by the principle and not by every act.11
that the mental character of successors, in all countries, is below the average of human understanding; that one is a tyrant, another an idiot, a third insane, and some all three togetherThe Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 2, 1779-1792
It requires some talents to be a common mechanic; but to be a king requires only the animal figure of man — a sort of breathing automaton.The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 2, 1779-1792
A cannot make a will to take from B the property of B, and give it to C; yet this is the manner in which (what is called) hereditary succession by law operates.The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 2, 1779-1792
On what ground, then, or by what authority, do we dare to deprive of their rights those children who will soon be men?The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 3, 1791-1804
The plain truth is, that the antiquity of English monarchy will not bear looking into.The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 1, 1774-1779
The one is a whole made up of parts, the other a whole without parts; and anything happening to the one, (as a part or section of the government,) is parallel to the same thing happening to the other.The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 3, 1791-1804
Monarchy and Hereditary Succession are incompatible with the _basis_ of its constitution.The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 3, 1791-1804
That in good theory, an hereditary transmission of any power of office, can never accord with the laws of a true representation. Hereditaryship is, in this sense, as much an attaint upon principle, as an outrage upon society.The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 2, 1779-1792
The representative system is the invention of the modern world; and, that no doubt may arise as to my own opinion, I declare it before hand, which is, _that there is not a problem in Euclid more mathematically true, than that hereditary government has not a right to exist.The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 3, 1791-1804
As to that equivocal thing called mixed government, such as the late government of Holland, and the present government of England, it does not make an exception to the general rule, because the parts separately considered are either representative or hereditary. Beginning then our enquiries at this point, we have first to examine into the nature of those two primary divisions.The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 3, 1791-1804
Freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and reason will say, 'tis right. I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature which no art can overturn, viz.The Writings of Thomas Paine Vol 1, 1774-1779
The argument that made two revolutions and that Burke, Adams and two centuries of constitutional thought have answered; its author never retreated an inch.