§. 65. Nay, this power so little belongs to the father by any peculiar right
of Nature, but only as he is guardian of his children, that when he quits his
care of them he loses his power over them, which goes along with their
nourishment and education, to which it is inseparably annexed, and belongs as
much to the foster-father of an exposed child as to the natural father of
another. So little power does the bare act of begetting give a man over his
issue, if all his care ends there, and this be all the title he hath to the
name and authority of a father. And what will become of this paternal power in
that part of the world where one woman hath more than one husband at a time? or
in those parts of America where, when the husband and wife part, which happens
frequently, the children are all left to the mother, follow her, and are wholly
under her care and provision? And if the father die whilst the children are
young, do they not naturally everywhere owe the same obedience to their mother,
during their minority, as to their father, were he alive? And will any one say
that the mother hath a legislative power over her children that she can make
standing rules which shall be of perpetual obligation, by which they ought to
regulate all the concerns of their property, and bound their liberty all the
course of their lives, and enforce the observation of them with capital
punishments? For this is the proper power of the magistrate, of which the
father hath not so much as the shadow. His command over his children is but
temporary, and reaches not their life or property. It is but a help to the
weakness and imperfection of their nonage, a discipline necessary to their
education. And though a father may dispose of his own possessions as he pleases
when his children are out of danger of perishing for want, yet his power
extends not to the lives or goods which either their own industry, or another's
bounty, has made theirs, nor to their liberty neither when they are once
arrived to the enfranchisement of the years of discretion. The father's empire
then ceases, and he can from thenceforward no more dispose of the liberty of
his son than that of any other man. And it must be far from an absolute or
perpetual jurisdiction from which a man may withdraw himself, having licence
from Divine authority to "leave father and mother and cleave to his
wife."
