Gazette Of The United States

The Princes of antiquity, and particularly the Roman Emperors, had recourse to the expedient of deification, in order to inspire into the minds of the people reverence for their persons, and absolute submission to their extravagancies. The jus divinum and sanctity of character, which some of our modern monarchs have assumed, are copies of this original absurdity, and calculated on similar principles of policy, to enslave the mind, and divest human nature of those rights and privileges communicated, by supreme power, to elevate the lot of man above the rest of the creation; but the people have detected the imposture, and regained that rational station in society, which their fathers had impotently resigned to the iniquity and caprice of monarchs for several thousand years.