All hereditary Government is in its nature tyranny. An heritable crown, or an heritable throne, or by what other fanciful name such things may be called, have no other significant explanation than that mankind are heritable property. To inherit a Government, is to inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds.
Joseph Priestley, The Rights of Man (1791).
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Joseph Priestley

1 reply on “Joseph Priestley”
If Priestley’s logick here were correct, then all government would be tyranny, with some governments transferring the tyranny by inheritance and others transferring it in other ways.
Instead, though, tyranny is a matter of how much control the state has over those whom it rules. A democracy or representative government that exercises too much control is a tyranny; a monarchy that does not violates the rights of the populace would be no tyranny.
The argument for democracy and for representative government is not that it is somehow a contrary of tyranny.