evidence: By Thomas Paine 1776 [Thomas Paine. Common Sense. In The Writings of Thomas Paine. Collected and Edited by Moncure Daniel Conway. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. 1894. Volume 1. Online Library of Liberty. Accessed 10 April 2017. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/343. In the Public Domain.] [...] To the evil of monarchy we have added that of hereditary succession; and as the first is a degradation and lessening of ourselves, so the second, claimed as a matter of right, is an insult and imposition on posterity. For 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 tho’ himself might deserve some decent degree of honours of his cotemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them. One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in Kings, is that nature disapproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by giving mankind an Ass for a Lion. [...] Perhaps the disorders which threatened, or seemed to threaten, on the decease of a leader and the choice of a new one (for elections among ruffians could not be very orderly) induced many at first to favour hereditary pretensions; by which means it happened, as it hath happened since, that what at first was submitted to as a convenience was afterwards claimed as a right.