HEREDITARY PRIVILEGES AND POSSESSIONS. The question of the admissibility of hereditary rights and privileges has been much agitated with regard to three points, especially in more recent times. The first is hereditary monarchy. The "divine" right of kings is now little urged, being felt to be incompatible with modern notions of the political relations of society; and the defense of the hereditary transmission of the supreme power of the state is rather rested on the ground of political expediency and necessity. The animosities and disturbances of public affairs that attend the ever recurring election of a head of the state are avoided, it is argued, by making power hereditary in a particular family, and by a determinate law of succession; while the dangers and disadvantages which might arise from an authority depending upon the chance of birth, arc capable of being neutralized by institutions which prevent the monarch from doing harm, even if there were not every reason to hope that self-interest will lead him to use time power Which is the birth-right of his family, for the permanent honor and advantage of that family, and, therefore, of the community with which it is indissolubly bound up.
Another and perhaps more difficult aspect of the question is with regard to hereditary classes, dignities, and offices in the state over and above the hereditary monarch. One thing is now universally agreed upon, that the transmission in individual families of dignities, rights, and offices, involving essential parts of government, such as the supreme dispensation of justice, and other attributes of sovereignty, is inconsistent with the very idea Of a state. The splitting up of Germany into a mazb of petty sovereignties arising out of fiefs of the empire become hereditary, is a signal instance of the dangers of this principle. A hereditary nobility with such rights no longer considered defen sible. it is another question whether, as a political institution, a class with certain hereditary privileges may not be advantageous or even necessary as an element of stability, and as affording a source of trained statesmanship. . Society has a longer life
than the individuals that compose it, and should have further-stretching views—" look ing before and after;" and it is chiefly in the great historical families of a nation, that such extended views grow up and and are cherished—families whose traditions form part of the national history, and which naturally identify their future with the national nrosperity and dignity. Besides their traditions and well-developed national instincts, the individual members of such families enjoy other advantages as political and social leaders. Their usually good education, and their well-secured possessions which, in addition to a high sense of honor, raise them above having recourse to petty shifts and jobs, make them valuable as examples and as administrators in a commonwealth which aims at dignity and stability. Carried to an extreme length, as was the case in France prior to the great revolution, the hereditary privileges of the nobility became a source of social discontent and disorder; but limited as in the United Kingdom, hereditary privi leges and dignities are found to be no way incompatible with the utmost social expan sion, and are in reality so pepularAs to be admittedly a happy feature in the structure of society. It is further to be observed, that as great families with privileges and titles are from time tolirne out, while others, through distinguished public services, are raised to the rank of nobility, that degree of infusion of new blood is kept up which Fives vigor to the system, and at least prevents the. British aristocracy from degenerat ing into an effete at antiquated caste.—As regards the economic view of hereditary right to private property, see J. S. Mill's Political Economy.