§. 61. Thus we are born free as we are born rational; not that we have
actually the exercise of either: age that brings one, brings with it the other
too. And thus we see how natural freedom and subjection to parents may consist
together, and are both founded on the same principle. A child is free by his
father's title, by his father's understanding, which is to govern him till he
hath it of his own. The freedom of a man at years of discretion, and the
subjection of a child to his parents, whilst yet short of it, are so consistent
and so distinguishable that the most blinded contenders for monarchy, "by
right of fatherhood," cannot miss of it; the most obstinate cannot but
allow of it. For were their doctrine all true, were the right heir of Adam now
known, and, by that title, settled a monarch in his throne, invested with all
the absolute unlimited power Sir Robert Filmer talks of, if he should die as
soon as his heir were born, must not the child, notwithstanding he were never
so free, never so much sovereign, be in subjection to his mother and nurse, to
tutors and governors, till age and education brought him reason and ability to
govern himself and others? The necessities of his life, the health of his body,
and the information of his mind would require him to be directed by the will of
others and not his own; and yet will any one think that this restraint and
subjection were inconsistent with, or spoiled him of, that liberty or
sovereignty he had a right to, or gave away his empire to those who had the
government of his nonage? This government over him only prepared him the better
and sooner for it. If anybody should ask me when my son is of age to be free, I
shall answer, just when his monarch is of age to govern.
"But at what
time," says the judicious Hooker (Eccl. Pol., lib. i., s. 6), "a man
may be said to have attained so far forth the use of reason as sufficeth to
make him capable of those laws whereby he is then bound to guide his actions;
this is a great deal more easy for sense to discern than for any one, by skill
and learning, to determine."
