an appellation given to whatever belongs to a family by right of succession from heir to heir. Hereditary. Hereditary is also figuratively applied to good or ill qualities supposed to be transmitted from father to son; thus we say virtue and piety are hereditary qualities in such a family; and that in Italy the hatred of families is hereditary. And indeed the gout, king's evil, madness, &c., may really be hereditary diseases.

Hereditary Right, in the British constitution. The grand fundamental maxim upon which the jus coronae, or right of succession to the throne of Britain depends, Sir William Blackstone takes to be this: That the crown is, by common law and constitutional custom, hereditary; and this in a manner peculiar to itself; but that the right of inheritance may from time to time be changed or limited by act of parliament; under which limitations the crown still continues hereditary.

1. The crown is in general hereditary, or descendible to the next heir, on the death or demise of the last proprietor. All regal governments must be either hereditary or elective; and as there is no instance wherein the crown of England has ever been asserted to be elective, except by the regicides at the infamous and unparalleled trial of king Charles I., it must of consequence be hereditary. Yet in thus asserting an hereditary right, a jure divino title to the throne is by no means intended. Such a title may be allowed to have subsisted under the theocratic establishments of the children of Israel in Palestine; but it never yet subsisted in any other country; save only so far as kingdoms, like other human fabrics, are subject to the general and ordinary dispensations of Providence. Nor indeed have a jure divino and an hereditary right any necessary connection with each other; as some have very weakly imagined. The titles of David and Jehu were equally jure divino as those of either Solomon or Ahab; and yet David slew the sons of his predecessor, and Jehu his predecessor himself. And when our kings have the same warrant as they had, whether it be to sit upon the throne of their fathers, or to destroy the house of the preceding sovereign, they will then, and not before, possess the crown of England by a right like theirs, immediately derived from heaven. The hereditary right, which the laws of England acknowledge, owes its origin to the founders of our constitution, and to them only. It has no relation to, nor depends upon, the civil laws of the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, or any other nation upon earth; the municipal laws of one society having no connection with, or influence upon, the fundamental polity of another. The founders of our English monarchy might perhaps, if they had thought proper, have made it an elective monarchy; but they rather chose, and upon good reason, to establish originally a succession by inheritance. This has been acquiesced in by general consent, and ripened by degrees into common law: the very same title that every private man has to his own estate. Lands are not naturally descendible, any more than thrones; but the law has thought proper, for the benefit and peace of the public, to establish hereditary succession in the one as well as the other.

It must be owned, an elective monarchy seems to be the most obvious, and best suited of any to the rational principles of government, and the freedom of human nature; and accordingly we find from history, that, in the infancy and first rudiments of almost every state, the leader, chief magistrate, or prince, hath usually been elective. And, if the individuals who compose that state could always continue true to first principles, uninfluenced by passion or prejudice, unassailed by corruption, and unawed by violence, elective succession were as much to be desired in a kingdom as in other inferior communities. The best, the wisest, and the bravest man, would then be sure of receiving that crown which his endowments have merited; and the sense of an unbiased majority would be dutifully acquiesced in by the few who were of different opinions. But history and observation will inform us, that elections of every kind (in the present state of human nature) are too frequently brought about by influence, partiality, and artifice; and, even where the case is otherwise, these practices will be often suspected, and as constantly charged upon the successful, by a sanguine disappointed minority. This is an evil to which all societies are liable; as well those of a private and domestic kind, as the great community of the public, which regulates and includes the rest. But in the former there is this advantage, That such suspicions, if false, proceed no farther than jealousies and murmurs, which time will effectually suppress; and, if true, the injustice may be remedied by legal means, by an appeal to those tribunals to which every member of society has (by becoming such) virtually engaged to submit. Whereas, in the great and independent society, which every nation composes, there is no superior to refer to but the law of nature; no method to redress the infringements of that law, but the actual exertion of private force. As therefore between two nations, complaining of mutual injuries, the quarrel can only be decided by the law of arms; so in one and the same nation, when the fundamental principles of their common union are supposed to be invaded, and more especially when the appointment of their chief magistrate is alleged to be unduly made, the only tribunal to which the complainants can appeal is that of the God of battles, the only process by which the appeal can be carried on is that of a civil and intestine war. An hereditary succession to the crown is therefore now established, in this and most other countries, in order to prevent that periodical bloodshed and misery, which the history of ancient imperial Rome, and the more modern experience of Poland and Germany, may show us are the consequences of elective kingdoms.

2. But, secondly, as to the particular mode of inheritance, it in general corresponds with the feudal path of descents, chalked out by the common law in the succession to landed estates; yet with one or two material exceptions. Like them, the crown will descend lineally to the issue of the reigning monarch; as it did from king John to Richard II., through a regular pedigree of six lineal generations: As in them the preference of males to females, and the right of primogeniture among the males, are strictly adhered to. Thus Edward V. succeeded to the crown, in preference to Richard his younger brother, and Elizabeth his elder sister. Like them, on failure of the male line, it descends to the issue female; according to the ancient British custom remarked by Tacitus, Solent ferminarum duos bellare, et sexum in imperio non discernere. Thus Mary I. succeeded to Edward VI.; and the line of Margaret queen of Scots, the daughter of Henry VII., Hereditary succeeded, on failure of the line of Henry VIII., his son. But among the females, the crown descends by right of primogeniture to the eldest daughter only and her issue; and not, as in common inheritances, to all the daughters at once; the evident necessity of a sole succession to the throne having occasioned the royal law of descents to depart from the common law in this respect: and therefore queen Mary, on the death of her brother, succeeded to the crown alone, and not in partnership with her sister Elizabeth. Again, the doctrine of representation prevails in the descent of the crown, as it does in other inheritances; whereby the lineal descendants of any person deceased stand in the same place as their ancestor, if living, would have done. Thus Richard II. succeeded his grandfather Edward III., in right of his father the black prince; to the exclusion of all his uncles, his grandfather's younger children. Lastly, on failure of lineal descendants, the crown goes to the next collateral relations of the late king; provided they are lineally descended from the blood-royal, that is, from that royal stock which originally acquired the crown. Thus Henry I. succeeded to William II. John to Richard I. and James I. to Elizabeth; being all derived from the Conqueror, who was then the only regal stock. But herein there is no objection (as in the case of common descents) to the succession of a brother, an uncle, or other collateral relation, of the half-blood; that is, where the relationship proceeds not from the same couple of ancestors (which constitutes a kinsman of the whole blood), but from a single ancestor only; as when two persons are derived from the same father, and not from the same mother, or vice versa: provided only, that the one ancestor, from whom both are descended, be that from whose veins the blood royal is communicated to each. Thus Mary I. inherited to Edward VI. and Elizabeth inherited to Mary; all born of the same father, king Henry VIII., but all by different mothers. See the articles Consanguinity, Descent, and Succession.

3. The doctrine of hereditary right does by no means imply an indefeasible right to the throne. No man will assert this, who has considered our laws, constitution, and history, without prejudice, and with any degree of attention. It is unquestionably in the breast of the supreme legislative authority of this kingdom, the king and both houses of parliament, to defeat this hereditary right; and, by particular entails, limitations, and provisions, to exclude the immediate heir, and vest the inheritance in any one else. This is strictly consonant to our laws and constitution; as may be gathered from the expression so frequently used in our statute-book, of "the king's majesty, his heirs, and successors." In which we may observe, that as the word heirs necessarily implies an inheritance or hereditary right generally subsisting in the royal person; so the word successors, distinctly taken, must imply that this inheritance may sometimes be broken through; or, that there may be a successor, without being the heir of the king. And this is so extremely reasonable, that without such a power, lodged somewhere, our polity would be very defective. For, let us barely suppose so melancholy a case, as that the heir-apparent should be a lunatic, an idiot, or otherwise incapable of reigning; how miserable would the condition of the nation be, if he were also incapable of being set aside! Hereditary—It is therefore necessary that this power should be lodged somewhere; and yet the inheritance and regal dignity would be very precarious indeed, if this power were expressly and avowedly lodged in the hands of the subject only, to be exerted whenever prejudice, caprice, or discontent, should happen to take the lead. Consequently it can nowhere be so properly lodged as in the two houses of parliament, by and with the consent of the reigning king; who, it is not to be supposed, will agree to anything improperly prejudicial to the rights of his own descendants. And therefore in the king, lords, and commons, in parliament assembled, our laws have expressly lodged it.

4. But, fourthly, However the crown may be limited or transferred, it still retains its descendable quality, and becomes hereditary in the wearer of it. And hence in our law the king is said never to die in his political capacity; though, in common with other men, he is subject to mortality in his natural: because immediately upon the natural death of Henry, William, or Edward, the king survives in his successor. For the right of the crown vests, eo instanti, upon his heir; either the heres natus, if the course of descent remains unimpeached, or the heres fictus, if the inheritance be under any particular settlement. So that there can be no interregnum; but, as Sir Matthew Hale observes, the right of sovereignty is fully invested in the successor by the very descent of the crown. And therefore, however acquired, it becomes in him absolutely hereditary, unless by the rules of the limitation it is otherwise ordered and determined: In the same manner as landed estates, to continue our former comparison, are by the law hereditary, or descendible to the heirs of the owner; but still there exists a power, by which the property of those lands may be transferred to another person. If this transfer be made simply and absolutely, the lands will be hereditary in the new owner, and descend to his heir at law: but if the transfer be clogged with any limitations, conditions, or entails, the lands must descend in that channel, so limited and prescribed, and no other. See Succession.