BOOK III PART II
the imagination, and render the subjects indif-
ferent to the son of their deceased monarch.
Hence in some governments of this kind, the
choice commonly falls on one or other of the
royal family; and in some governments they
are all excluded. Those contrary phaenomena
proceed from the same principle. Where the
royal family is excluded, it is from a refine-
ment in politics, which makes people sensi-
ble of their propensity to chuse a sovereign in
that family, and gives them a jealousy of their
liberty, lest their new monarch, aided by this
propensity, should establish his family, and de-
stroy the freedom of elections for the future.
The history of Artaxerxes, and the younger
Cyrus, may furnish us with some reflections to
the same purpose. Cyrus pretended a right to
the throne above his elder brother, because he