§. 76. Thus the natural fathers of families, by an insensible change, became
the politic monarchs of them too; and as they chanced to live long, and leave
able and worthy heirs for several successions or otherwise, so they laid the
foundations of hereditary or elective kingdoms under several constitutions and
manors, according as chance, contrivance, or occasions happened to mould them.
But if princes have their titles in the father's right, and it be a sufficient
proof of the natural right of fathers to political authority, because they
commonly were those in whose hands we find, de facto, the exercise of
government, I say, if this argument be good, it will as strongly prove that all
princes, nay, princes only, ought to be priests, since it is as certain that in
the beginning "the father of the family was priest, as that he was ruler
in his own household."
