§. 102. He must show a strange inclination to deny evident matter of fact,
when it agrees not with his hypothesis, who will not allow that the beginning
of Rome and Venice were by the uniting together of several men, free and
independent one of another, amongst whom there was no natural superiority or
subjection. And if Josephus Acosta's word may be taken, he tells us that in
many parts of America there was no government at all. "There are great and
apparent conjectures," says he, "that these men [speaking of those of
Peru] for a long time had neither kings nor commonwealths, but lived in troops,
as they do this day in Florida — the Cheriquanas, those of Brazil, and
many other nations, which have no certain kings, but, as occasion is offered in
peace or war, they choose their captains as they please" (lib. i. cap.
25). If it be said, that every man there was born subject to his father, or the
head of his family. that the subjection due from a child to a father took away
not his freedom of uniting into what political society he thought fit, has been
already proved; but be that as it will, these men, it is evident, were actually
free; and whatever superiority some politicians now would place in any of them,
they themselves claimed it not; but, by consent, were all equal, till, by the
same consent, they set rulers over themselves. So that their politic societies
all began from a voluntary union, and the mutual agreement of men freely acting
in the choice of their governors and forms of government.
