All men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and though he might himself deserve some decent degree of honors of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them. One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of the hereditary right of kings, is, that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it to ridicule by giving mankind an ass for a lion.
Tom Paine, Common Sense (1776) In Foner, Eric, ed. Voices of Freedom: A Documentary History, Fourth Edition, Volume 1. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2014), 96-97.
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