is to be observed out of that Story, that all those Emperors
which ruled by Right of Inheritance, proved most of them
no better than savage Beasts, and all of them wicked, except
Titus. 'Tis true indeed, that a Nation may have some
Respit aud recruit now and then, by the Vertue and Valor
of a single Prince, yet this is very rare; and when it doth
happen, it lasts usually no longer than for his life, because
his Son or Successor (for the most part) proves more weak,
or vitious, than himself was Vertuous, as you may see in
the several Lists of Kings throughout great-Britain, France,
Spain, and all the world. But this is not all the Inconvenience;
that Hereditary Princes have been, and are, for the
most part, wicked in their own persons; For, as great Inconveniencies
happen by their being often litigious in their
Titles; witness the bloudy disputes betwixt the Princes of
the Bloud in France; as also in England, between the two
Houses of York and Lancaster, to which many more might
be reckoned out of all other Kingdoms; which miseries the
People might have avoided, had they not been tied to one
particular Line of Succession. Therefore, if any Kingly
Form be tollerable, it must be that which is by Election; and
herein as Kings are tolerable only upon this Account of being
Elective, so these Elective Kings are as intolerable upon
another Account, because their present greatness gives
them opportunity ever to practise such Sleights, that in a
short time, the Government which they received only for
their own lives, will become entailed upon their Families,
whereby the Peoples Election will be made of no effect, farther
than for fashion, to mock the poor People, and adorn
the Triumphs of aspiring Tyranny, as it hath been seen in the
Elective Kingdoms of Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, and Sweden,
where the Forms of Election were, and are still retained,
but the Power swallowed up, and the Kingdoms made Hereditary;
not only in Sweden by the Artifice of Gustavus
Ericus, but also in Poland and the Empire, where the Peoples
Right of Election was soon eaten out by the cunning
of the two Families of Casimire and Austria.