§. 53. Had but this one thing been well considered without looking any deeper
into the matter, it might perhaps have kept men from running into those gross
mistakes they have made about this power of parents, which however it might
without any great harshness bear the name of absolute dominion and regal
authority, when under the title of "paternal" power, it seemed
appropriated to the father; would yet have sounded but oddly, and in the very
name shown the absurdity, if this supposed absolute power over children had
been called parental, and thereby discovered that it belonged to the mother
too. For it will but very ill serve the turn of those men who contend so much
for the absolute power and authority of the fatherhood, as they call it, that
the mother should have any share in it. And it would have but ill supported the
monarchy they contend for, when by the very name it appeared that that
fundamental authority from whence they would derive their government of a
single person only was not placed in one, but two persons jointly. But to let
this of names pass.
