Hereditary succession

Hereditary succession is the transmission of political authority from a ruler to descendants as a claimed right. In Thomas Paine’s argument, it is not merely an imperfect way to select rulers: it compounds monarchy’s degradation of political equality by imposing one family’s authority on generations that never consented to it. He tests the claim against natural equality, the limits of the founders’ authority, the dangers of unfit rulers, and England’s history of conflict, then contrasts inherited power with government grounded in public choice.

Definition and Claim to Authority

Paine begins from the premise that mankind was originally equal. Differences between rich and poor, he allows, can arise through circumstances; the division between kings and subjects, by contrast, has no genuinely natural or religious justification. Hereditary succession makes that political distinction permanent by claiming that birth gives one family a continuing right to rule. An individual might merit honors from contemporaries, Paine concedes, but that merit cannot establish that descendants deserve the same honors or authority.

The claim therefore reaches beyond the person who first receives power. Even if a community chooses someone as its head, its members cannot justly promise that the chosen person’s children and grandchildren will rule their own descendants forever. The original electors have no authority to dispose of posterity’s rights. A compact that binds future generations in this way could leave them governed by a rogue or a fool, while denying them the freedom to choose otherwise.

Paine distinguishes the origin of an office from the later assertion that it must pass through a family. If a first ruler came to power by lot, that precedent would support another selection by lot, not inheritance. If the ruler was elected, the precedent would likewise support choosing a successor. Neither method makes the first generation’s choice of a ruler equivalent to a legitimate choice of an entire ruling family for all time. Paine compares that supposed transfer of authority to the doctrine of original sin: both, in his account, represent later generations as deprived of a former freedom by an act attributed to their predecessors.

Origins and the Making of Inherited Right

Paine questions whether hereditary monarchy began with a lawful, deliberate transfer at all. He speculates that early rulers may have emerged as leaders of predatory groups, gaining authority through force or skill and compelling others to contribute for protection. Even if a leader’s followers chose him, Paine argues, their professed freedom would be incompatible with a permanent exclusion of themselves and their descendants from political choice.

He suggests that hereditary claims may first have been accepted as a convenience rather than established as a right. A leader’s death could bring disorder while a successor was selected, making inheritance seem useful as a way to avoid uncertainty. Over time, that practical expedient could be recast as an entitlement, with traditional stories supplying a persuasive origin for a claim that had not originally rested on consent. The distinction between convenience and right is central: repetition may make an arrangement familiar without making it just.

Paine also challenges the idea that hereditary monarchy has an honorable foundation in England. He points to William the Conqueror’s arrival with an armed force and establishment as king against the consent of the native population. Whatever later acceptance may have followed, Paine treats this origin as usurpation, not as evidence of a divinely authorized hereditary right. His argument is historical as well as theoretical: the age of an institution cannot by itself prove its legitimacy.

Political Risks and Historical Consequences

The chief practical objection, Paine says, is not only that inherited authority is irrational but that it exposes a nation to rulers who have not earned public trust. Hereditary succession opens the way for foolish, wicked, or otherwise unsuitable heirs. A person brought up to believe that birth entitles him to rule may become insolent, while life apart from the public gives him little opportunity to understand the interests of the people he will govern. Succession can therefore place the highest authority in the hands of someone poorly prepared to exercise it.

The danger extends beyond the heir. A minor may inherit the throne, leaving a regency to wield power in the king’s name; an aged and infirm ruler may likewise leave the public vulnerable to those able to exploit his weakness. In either circumstance, the inherited office remains in place while effective authority passes into other hands. The public, Paine warns, bears the risk created by a system that makes political capacity secondary to birth.

Hereditary succession is commonly defended as a safeguard against civil war, but Paine disputes that defense with England’s record. Since the Conquest, he counts thirty kings and two minors, alongside eight civil wars and nineteen rebellions, including the Revolution. He presents these figures as evidence that succession has not secured peace; it has helped produce contests over who may inherit the crown.

The conflict between the houses of York and Lancaster makes the argument concrete. Paine describes twelve pitched battles, as well as skirmishes and sieges, in the struggle involving Henry and Edward. Each was at different times a prisoner of the other; Henry was carried from prison to palace, while Edward fled from palace to a foreign land and was later recalled. Parliament, in Paine’s account, followed the stronger side. The contest began in Henry the Sixth’s reign and was not fully extinguished until Henry the Seventh, when the families were united, spanning the period from 1422 to 1489. A system presented as a bulwark against disorder thus becomes the occasion for a prolonged struggle over personal and dynastic claims.

Alternatives and Political Significance

The alternative to inherited authority is not an absence of political organization. Paine distinguishes society, which arises from people’s wants and mutual assistance, from government, which becomes necessary when moral virtue alone cannot reliably restrain wrongdoing. People naturally need cooperation: a small group can raise a dwelling where one person working alone might fail to finish the task, while illness or misfortune could leave an isolated person unable to survive. As a community grows, shared deliberation becomes difficult, and it may entrust legislation to chosen representatives.

That arrangement must remain accountable to those who authorize it. Paine argues for frequent elections so that elected representatives return to the wider community rather than acquire a separate interest. Their fidelity is secured, in part, by the prospect of rejoining the people they represent. Political strength and the governed people’s happiness therefore depend not on a king’s inherited title but on a common interest between electors and representatives.

The purpose of government, in this account, is freedom and security. Government is a necessary response to the limits of moral virtue, not a title to rule for its own sake; the form that best achieves security with the least expense and greatest benefit is preferable. Paine’s criticism of hereditary succession follows from that standard: a political arrangement that removes the public’s choice, risks unfit rulers, and has repeatedly failed to prevent conflict cannot justify itself by appeal to age or inherited prestige.

His proposed constitutional direction makes the contrast institutional. Assemblies should be annual, with a president rather than a hereditary monarch, and representation should be more equal. A Continental Charter should establish how representatives are chosen, define the jurisdictions of continental and local bodies, and secure freedom, property, and the free exercise of religion. In this model, authority derives from public authorization and remains bounded by law. Hereditary succession is rejected not simply because a particular heir may be undeserving, but because political rights cannot properly be inherited away from the people who hold them.