§. 71. This shows the reason how it comes to pass that parents in societies,
where they themselves are subjects, retain a power over their children and have
as much right to their subjection as those who are in the state of Nature,
which could not possibly be if all political power were only paternal, and
that, in truth, they were one and the same thing; for then, all paternal power
being in the prince, the subject could naturally have none of it. But these two
powers, political and paternal, are so perfectly distinct and separate, and
built upon so different foundations, and given to so different ends, that every
subject that is a father has as much a paternal power over his children as the
prince has over his. And every prince that has parents owes them as much filial
duty and obedience as the meanest of his subjects do to theirs, and can
therefore contain not any part or degree of that kind of dominion which a
prince or magistrate has over his subject.
