the strongest to restrain their excesses, Be goes on to
enquire whether dominion should be transmitted by
hereditary succession or whether a fresh choice should take
place at every vacancy. On the one hand it may be urged
that the security of tenure possessed by an hereditary
monarch, and the certainty he has of handing down his
dominion to his son, is an inducement to him to play the
tyrant ; on the other hand this very fact may increase
his care for his dominion and cause him to make the best
use of it. It is here assumed, as regularly in the middle
ages, that a prince whom the community has elected, it
may depose ; while an hereditary monarch, according to
the common belief, could not be legally deprived of his
power. Again, in favour of the elective principle, a it
may be said that an election in which all qualified persons
take part must be right. But Wycliffe, as we have seen,
has no opinion of the value of the popular vote : since the
fall of man, he says, it generally happens that the electing
community is, altogether or in its greater part, infected by
crime ; and thus it happens that it is at fault in elections,
even as in other acts alike concerning God and the common
wealth.[1] Wycliffe argues at length on both sides; incidently he discloses a good deal of political acuteness, and he leans towards a preference for the hereditary
principle : but no experience or historical observation
will induce him to forego the application here also of his
first doctrine ; and thus c he decides that neither heredity
nor election furnishes any title sufficient for the foundation
of human dominion, without the anterior condition of grace
in the person so elected or so succeeding, a Wherefore it
appears to me that the discreet theologian will determine nothing
rashly as touching these laws, but will affirm according to law
that it were better that all things should be had in common.
- ↑ The only concession he makes is as follows : Non est possibile comniunitatem in elcccione defi- cere, nisi peccatum pertinens sit in causa ; Deus enim non potest deficere abinstinctu regitivopopu- li secundum sibi utilius, cum hoc quod populus utrobique Deo faciat quidquid debet : f. 69 c. But it will be seen that the qualification repeated in this sentence deprives it of most of its force.
