§. 116. This has been the practice of the world from its first beginning to
this day; nor is it now any more hindrance to the freedom of mankind, that they
are born under constituted and ancient polities that have established laws and
set forms of government, than if they were born in the woods amongst the
unconfined inhabitants that run loose in them. For those who would persuade us
that by being born under any government we are naturally subjects to it, and
have no more any title or pretence to the freedom of the state of Nature, have
no other reason (bating that of paternal power, which we have already answered)
to produce for it, but only because our fathers or progenitors passed away
their natural liberty, and thereby bound up themselves and their posterity to a
perpetual subjection to the government which they themselves submitted to. It
is true that whatever engagements or promises any one made for himself, he is
under the obligation of them, but cannot by any compact whatsoever bind his
children or posterity. For his son, when a man, being altogether as free as the
father, any act of the father can no more give away the liberty of the son than
it can of anybody else. He may, indeed, annex such conditions to the land he
enjoyed, as a subject of any commonwealth, as may oblige his son to be of that
community, if he will enjoy those possessions which were his father's, because
that estate being his father's property, he may dispose or settle it as he
pleases.
