When the mind of a nation is bowed down by any political superstition in its government, such as hereditary succession is, it loses a considerable portion of its powers on all other subjects and objects.

Hereditary succession requires the same obedience to ignorance, as to wisdom; and when once the mind can bring itself to pay this indiscriminate reverence, it descends below the stature of mental manhood.

It is fit to be great only in little things.

It acts a treachery upon itself, and suffocates the sensations that urge the detection.
Though the ancient governments present to us a miserable picture of the condition of man, there is one which above all others exempts itself from the general description.

I mean the democracy of the Athenians.