BOOK III PART II
authority of their rulers, or promised to obey
them, they would be inclined to think very
strangely of you; and would certainly reply,
that the affair depended not on their consent,
but that they were born to such an obedience.
In consequence of this opinion, we frequently
see them imagine such persons to be their nat-
ural rulers, as are at that time deprived of all
power and authority, and whom no man, how-
ever foolish, would voluntarily chuse; and this
merely because they are in that line, which
ruled before, and in that degree of it, which
used to succeed; though perhaps in so distant
a period, that scarce any man alive coued ever
have given any promise of obedience. Has a
government, then, no authority over such as
these, because they never consented to it, and
would esteem the very attempt of such a free
choice a piece of arrogance and impiety? We