§. 106. Thus, though looking back as far as records give us any account of
peopling the world, and the history of nations, we commonly find the government
to be in one hand, yet it destroys not that which I affirm — viz., that
the beginning of politic society depends upon the consent of the individuals to
join into and make one society, who, when they are thus incorporated, might set
up what form of government they thought fit. But this having given occasion to
men to mistake and think that, by Nature, government was monarchical, and
belonged to the father, it may not be amiss here to consider why people, in the
beginning, generally pitched upon this form, which, though perhaps the father's
pre-eminency might, in the first institution of some commonwealths, give a rise
to and place in the beginning the power in one hand, yet it is plain that the
reason that continued the form of government in a single person was not any
regard or respect to paternal authority, since all petty monarchies — that
is, almost all monarchies, near their original, have been commonly, at least
upon occasion, elective.
