No race of kings has ever presented above one man of common sense in twenty generations.

There is not a crowned head in Europe whose talents or merits would entitle him to be elected a vestryman by the people of any parish in America.

The practice of kings marrying only in the families of kings has been that of Europe for some centuries.  Now, take any race of animals, confine them in idleness and inaction, whether in a sty, a stable, or a state room, pamper them with high diet, gratify all their sexual appetites, immerse them in sensualities, nourish their passions, let everything bend before them, and banish whatever might lead them to think, and in a few generations they become all body and no mind; and this, too, by a law of nature, by that very law by which we are in the constant practice of changing the characters and propensities of the animals we raise for our own purposes.  Such is the regimen in raising kings, and in this way they have gone on for centuries.

While in Europe, I often amused myself with contemplating the characters of the then reigning sovereigns of Europe.  Louis the XVI was a fool, of my own knowledge, and in spite of the answers made for him at his trial.  The King of Spain was a fool, and of Naples the same.  They passed their lives in hunting, and dispatched two couriers a week, one thousand miles, to let each other know what game they had killed the preceding days.  The King of Sardinia was a fool.  All these were Bourbons.  The Queen of Portugal, a Braganza, was an idiot by nature.  And so was the King of Denmark.  Their sons, as regents, exercised the powers of government.  The King of Prussia, successor to the great Frederick, was a mere hog in body as well as in mind.  Gustavus of Sweden and Joseph of Austria were really crazy, and George of England, you know, was in a straight waistcoat.  There remained, then, none but old Catherine, who had been too lately picked up to have lost her common sense.

In this state Bonaparte found Europe; and it was this state of its rulers which lost it with scarce a struggle.  These animals had become without mind and powerless; and so will every hereditary monarch be after a few generations.  Alexander, the grandson of Catherine, is as yet an exception. He is able to hold his own.  But he is only of the third generation.  His race is not yet worn out.  And so endeth the book of kings, from all of whom the Lord deliver us.

 

—Thomas Jefferson

 

("It is one of the wonders of the modern political world that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  Unaware that the 'Sage of Monticello' had died earlier in the day, the crusty Adams, as he felt his own life slipping away, uttered his last words, 'Thomas Jefferson still lives.' ")

 

—Jean Yarbrough