§. 74. To conclude, then, though the father's power of commanding extends no
farther than the minority of his children, and to a degree only fit for the
discipline and government of that age; and though that honour and respect, and
all that which the Latins called piety, which they indispensably owe to their
parents all their lifetime, and in all estates, with all that support and
defence, is due to them, gives the father no power of governing — i.e.,
making laws and exacting penalties on his children; though by this he has no
dominion over the property or actions of his son, yet it is obvious to conceive
how easy it was, in the first ages of the world, and in places still where the
thinness of people gives families leave to separate into unpossessed quarters,
and they have room to remove and plant themselves in yet vacant habitations,
for the father of the family to become the prince of it;[1]
he had been a ruler from the beginning of the infancy of his children; and when
they were grown up, since without some government it would be hard for them to
live together, it was likeliest it should, by the express or tacit consent of
the children, be in the father, where it seemed, without any change, barely to
continue. And when, indeed, nothing more was required to it than the permitting
the father to exercise alone in his family that executive power of the law of
Nature which every free man naturally hath, and by that permission resigning up
to him a monarchical power whilst they remained in it. But that this was not by
any paternal right, but only by the consent of his children, is evident from hence,
that nobody doubts but if a stranger, whom chance or business had brought to his
family, had there killed any of his children, or committed any other act, he might
condemn and put him to death, or otherwise have punished him as well as any of
his children. which was impossible he should do by virtue of any paternal
authority over one who was not his child, but by virtue of that executive power
of the law of Nature which, as a man, he had a right to; and he alone could
punish him in his family where the respect of his children had laid by the
exercise of such a power, to give way to the dignity and authority they were
willing should remain in him above the rest of his family.
