Voltaire - A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 07

Examination Whether Daughters Are In All Cases Deprived Of Every Species Of Inheritance By This Salic Law.

I have already bestowed the empire on a daughter in defiance of the Golden Bull. I shall have no difficulty in conferring on a daughter the kingdom of France. I have a better right to dispose of this realm than Pope Julian II., who deprived Louis XII. of it, and transferred it by his own single authority to the emperor Maximilian. I am better authorized to plead in behalf of the daughters of the house of France, than Pope Gregory XIII. and Cordelier Sextus-Quintus were to exclude from the throne our princes of the blood, under the pretence actually urged by these excellent priests, that Henry IV. and the princes of Condé were a "bastard and detestable race" of Bourbon – refined and holy words, which deserve ever to be remembered in order to keep alive the conviction of all we owe to the bishops of Rome. I may give my vote in the states-general, and no pope certainly can have any suffrage on it. I therefore give my vote without hesitation, some three or four hundred years from the present time, to a daughter of France, then the only descendant remaining in a direct line from Hugh Capet. I constitute her queen, provided she shall have been well educated, have a sound understanding, and be no bigot. I interpret in her favor that law which declares " que fille ne doit mie succéder " – that a daughter must in no case come to her succession. I understand by the words, that she must in no case succeed as long as there shall be any male. But on failure of males, I prove that the kingdom belongs to her by nature, which ordains it, and for the benefit of the nation.

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