of his son, than that of any other man: and it must be far from an absolute or perpetual juris- diction, from which a man may withdraw him- self, having licence from divine authority to leave father and mother, and cleave to his ivife.
R 242 OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.
§. 66. But though there be a time when a child comes to be as free from subjection to the will and command of his father, as the father himself is free from subjection to the will of any body else, and they are each under no other restraint, but that which is common to them both, whether it be the law of nature, or munici- pal law of their country; yet this freedom exempts not a son from that honour which he ought, by the law of God and nature, to pay his parents. God having made the parents instruments in his great design of continuing the race of mankind, and the occasions of life to their children: as he hath laid on them an obligation to nourish, preserve, and bring up their offspring; so he has laid on the children a perpetual obligation of honouring their jicwents, which containing in it an inward esteem and reverence to be shewn by all outward expres- sions, ties up the child from any thing that may ever injure or affront, disturb or endanger, the happiness or life of those from whom he received his; and engages him in all actions of defence, relief, assistance and comfort of those, by whose means he entered into being, and has been made capable of any enjoyments of life: from this obligation no state, no freedom can absolve children. But this is very far from giving parents a power of command over their children, or an authority to make laws and dispose as they please of their lives or liberties. It is one thing to owe honour, respect, gratitude OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 243 and assistance; another to require an absolute obedience and submission. The honour due to parents, a monarch in his throne owes his mother; and yet this lessens not his authority, nor subjects him to her government.
§. 67. The subjection of a minor places in the father a temporary government, which ter- minates with the minority of the child: and the honour due from a child places in the parents a perpetual right to respect, reverence, support and compliance too, more or less, as the fa- ther's care, cost, and kindness in his education, has been more or less. This ends not with minority, but holds in all parts and conditions of a man's life. The want of distinguishing these two powers, viz. that which the father hath in the right of tuition, during minority, and the right of honour all his life, may per- haps have caused a great part of the mistakes about this matter: for to speak properly of them, the first of these is rather the privilege of children, and duty of parents, than any prerogative of paternal power. The nourish- ment and education of their children is a charge so incumbent on parents for their chil- dren's good, that nothing can absolve them from taking care of it: and though the power of commanding and chastising- them go along with it, yet God hath woven into the principles of humam nature such a tenderness for their offspring, that there is little fear that parents should use their power with too much rigour; 244 OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.
the excess is seldom on the severe side, the strong bias of nature drawing the other way. And therefore God Almighty when he would express his gentle dealing with the Israelites, he tells them, that though he chastened them, he chastens them as a man chastens his son, Deut. viii. 5. i. e. with tenderness and affec- tion, and kept them under no severer discipline than what was absolutely best for them, and had been less kindness to have slackened. This is that power to which children are com- manded obedience, that the pains and care of their parents may not be increased, or ill rewarded.
§. 68. On the other side, honour and support, all that which gratitude requires to return for the benefits received by and from them, is the indispensible duty of the child, and the proper privilege of the parents. This is intended for the parent's advantage, as the other is for the child's; though education, the parent's duty, seems to have most power, because the igno- rance and infirmities of childhood stand in need of restraint and correction; which is a visible exercise of rule, and a kind of do- minion. And that duty which is comprehen- ded in the word honour requires less obedience, though the obligation be stronger on grown, than younger children: for who can think the command, Children obey your parents, requires in a man, that has children of his own, the same submission to his father, as it does in his OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 245 yet young children to him; and that by this precept he were bound to obey all his lather's commands, if, out of a conceit of authority, he should have the indiscretion to treat him still as a boy?
§. 69. The first part then of paternal power, or rather duty, which is education, belongs so to the father, that it terminates at a certain season; when the business of education is over, it ceases of itself, and is also alienable before: for a man may put the tuition of his son in other hands; and he that has made his son an apprentice to another, has discharged him, during that time, of a great part of his obedience both to himself and to his mother. But all the duty of honour, the other part, remains nevertheless entire to them; nothing- can cancel that: it is so inseparable from them both, that the father's authority cannot dis- possess the mother of this right, nor can any man discharge his son from honouring her that bore him. But both these are very far from a power to make laws, and inforcing them with penalties, that may reach estate, liberty, limbs and life. The power of commanding ends with non-age; and though, after that, honour and respect, support and defence, and what- soever gratitude can oblige a man to, for the highest benefits he is naturally capable of, be always due from a son to his parents,; yet all this puts no sceptre into the father's hand, no sovereign power of commanding. He has no 246 OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.
dominion over his son's property, or actions; nor any right, that his will should prescribe to his son's in all things; however it may become his son in many things, not very inconvenient to him and his family, to pay a deference to it.
§. 70. A man may owe honour and respect to an ancient, or wise man; defence to his child or friend; relief and support to the dis- tressed; and gratitude to a benefactor, to such a degree, that all he has, all he can do, cannot sufficiently pay it: but all these give no authority, no right to any one, of making laws over him from whom they are owing. And it is plain, all this is due not only to the bare title of father; not only because, as has been said, it is owing to the mother too; but because these obligations to parents, and de- grees of what is required of children, may be varied by the different care and kindness, trouble and expence, which is often employed upon one child more than another.
§.71. This shews 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 a 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.
OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 247 But these two powers, political and paternal, are so perfectly distinct and separate; are 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 theirs; and can therefore contain not any part or degree of that kind of dominion, which a prince or magistrate has over his subject.
§. 72. Though the obligation on the parents to bring up their children, and the obligation on children to honour their parents, contain all the power on the one hand, and submission on the other, which are proper to this relation, yet there is another power ordinarily in the father, whereby he has a tie on the obedience of his children; which though it be common to him with other men, yet the occasions of shewing it, almost constantly happening to fathers in their private families, and the in- stances of it elsewhere being rare, and less taken notice of, it passes in the world for a part of paternal jurisdiction. And this is the power men generally have to bestow their es- tates on those who please them best; the possession of the father being the expectation and inheritance of the children, ordinarily in certain proportions, according to the law and custom of each country; yet it is commonly 248 OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.
in the father's power to bestow it with a more sparing or liberal hand, according as the be- haviour of this or that child hath comported with his will and humour.
§. 73. This is no small tie on the obedience of children: and there being always annexed to the enjoyment of land, a submission to the government of the country, of which that land is a part; it has been commonly supposed, that a. father could oblige his posterity to that government, of which he himself was a subject, and that his compact held them; whereas, it being only a necessary condition annexed to the land, and the inheritance of an estate which is under that government, reaches only those who will take it on that condition, and so is no natural tie or engagement, but a volun- tary submission: for every mans children being by nature as free as himself, or any of his an- cestors ever were, may, whilst they are in that freedom, choose what society they will join themselves to, what commonwealth they will put themselves under. But if they will enjoy the inheritance of their ancestors, they must take it on the same terms their ancestors had it, and submit to all the conditions annexed to such a possession. By this power indeed fathers oblige their children to obedience to themselves, even when they are past minority, and most commonly too subject them to this or that political power, but neither of these by any peculiar right of fatherhood, but by the OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 249 reward they have in their hands to inforce and recompence such a compliance; and is no more power than what a French man has over an English man, who, by the hopes of an estate he will leave him, will certainly have a strong tie on his obedience: and if, when it is left him, he will enjoy it, he must certainly take it upon the conditions annexed to the possession of land in that country where it lies, whether it be France or England.
§. 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 indispensibly owe to their parents all their life time, 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 enacting penalties on his children; though by all 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 se- parate into unpossessed quarters, and they have room to remove or plant themselves in yet vacant habitations, for the father of the family to become the prince of it;* he had been a * It is no improbable opinion therefore, which the arch- philosopher was of, that the chief person in every household 250 OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.
ruler from the beginning of the infancy of his children: and 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 when they were grown up, be in the father, where it seemed without any change barely to continue; when indeed nothing more was required to it, than the per- mitting the father to exercise alone, in his family, that executive power of the law of na- ture, which every free man naturally hath, and by that permission resigning up to him a mo- narchical power, whilst they remained in it. But that this was not by any paternal right, but only by the consent of his children, is evi- dent from hence, that no body doubts, but if a stranger, whom chance or business had brought was always, as it were, a king: so when numbers of house- holds joined themselves in civil societies together, kings were the first kind of governors amongst them, which is also, as it seemeth, the reason why the name of fathers continued still in them, who, of fathers, were made rulers; as also the ancient custom of governors to do as Aldchisedec, and being kings, to exercise the office of priests, which fathers did at the first, grew perhaps by the same occasion. Howbeit, this is not the only kind of regiment that has been received in the world. The inconveniences of one kind have caused sundry others to be devised; so that in a word, all public regiment, of what kind soever, seemeth evidently to have risen from the deliberate advice, consultation and compo- sition between men, judging it convenient and behovcful; there being no impossibility in nature considered by itself, but that man might have lived without any public regiment. Hookers Ecd. P. lib. i. Sect. 10.
OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 251 to his family, had there killed any of his chil- dren, or committed any other fact, he might condemn and put him to death, or otherwise have punished him, as well as any of his chil- dren; which it was impossible he should do by virtue of any paternal authority over one who was not his child, but by virtue of that execu- tive 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.
§. 75. Thus it was easy, and almost natural for children, by a tacit, and scarce avoidable consent, to make way for the father 's authority and government. They had been accustomed in their childhood to follow his direction, and to refer their little differences to him; and when they were men, who fitter to rule them? Their little properties, and less covetousness, seldom afforded greater controversies; and when any should arise, where could they have a fitter umpire than he, by whose care they had every one been sustained and brought up, and who had a tenderness for them all? It is no wonder that they made no distinction betwixt minority and full age; nor looked after one-and- twenty, or any other age that might make them the free disposers of themselves and fortunes, when thev could have no desire to be out of 252 OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.
their pupilage: the government they had been under, during it, continued still to be more their protection than restraint; and they could no where find a greater security to their peace, liberties, and fortunes, than in the rule of a father.
§. 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 man- ners, according as chance, contrivance, or oc- casions happened to mould them. But if princes have their titles in their fathers 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 begin- ning, the father of the family was priest, as that he teas ruler in his own household.
CHAPTER VII.
Of Political or Civil Society.
§. 77. God having made man such a crea- ture, that in his own judgement, it was not OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 253 good for him to be alone, put him under strong obligations of necessity, convenience, and incli- nation to drive him into society, as well as fitted him with understanding and language to con- tinue and enjoy it. The first society was between man and wife, which gave beginning to that between parents and children; to which, in time, that between master and servant came to be added: and though all these might, and commonly did meet together, and make up but one family, wherein the master or mistress of it had some sort of rule proper to a family; each of these, or all together, came short of political society, as we shall see, if we consider the different ends, ties, and bounds of each of these.
§. 78. Conjugal society is made by a volun- tary compact between man and woman: and though it consist chiefly in such a communion and right in one another's bodies as is necessary to its chief end, procreation; yet it draws with it mutual support and assistance, and a com- munion of interests too, as necessary not only to unite their care and affection, but also neces- sary to their common offspring, who have a right to be nourished, and maintained by them till they are able to provide for themselves.
§. 79. For the end of conjunction between male and female, being not barely procreation, but the continuation of the species; this con- junction betwixt male and female ought to last, even after procreation, so long as is necessary 254 OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.
to the nourishment and support of the young ones, who are to be sustained by those that got them, till they are able to shift and provide for themselves. This rule, which the infinite wise maker hath set to the works of his hands, we find the inferior creatures steadily obey. In those viviparous animals which feed on grass, the conjunction betiveen male and female lasts no longer than the very act of copulation: because the teat of the dam being sufficient to nourish the young, till it be able to feed on grass, the male only begets, but concerns not himself for the female or young, to whose sustenance he can contribute nothing. But in beasts of prey the conjunction lasts longer: because the dam not being able well to subsist herself, and nourish her numerous off-spring by her own prey alone, a more laborious, as well as more dangerous way of living, than by feeding on grass, the assistance of the male is necessary to the maintenance of their common family, which cannot subsist till they are able to prey for themselves, but by the joint care of male and female. The same is to be observed in all birds, (except some domestic ones, where plenty of food excuses the cock from feeding, and taking care of the young brood) whose young needing food in the nest, the cock and hen continue mates, till the young are able to use their wing, and provide for themselves.
§. 80. And herein I think lies the chief, if not the only reason, why the male and female in OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 250 mankind are tied to a longer conjunction than other creatures, viz. because the female is capa- ble of conceiving, and de facto is commonly with child again, and brings forth to a new birth, long before the former is out of a dependency for support on his parents help, and able to shift for himself, and has all the assistance that is due to him from his parents: whereby the father, who is bound to take care for those he hath begot, is under an obligation to continue in conjugal society with the same woman longer than other creatures, whose young being able to subsist of themselves, before the time of procreation returns again, the conjugal bond dissolves of itself, and they are at liberty, till Hymen at his usual anniversary season sum- mons them again to choose new mates. Wherein one cannot but admire the wisdom of the great Creator, who having given to man foresight, and an ability to lay up for the future, as well as to supply the present necessity, hath made it necessary, that society of man and wife should be more lasting, than of male and female among other creatures; that so their industry might be encouraged, and their interest better united, to make provision and lay up goods for their common issue, with uncertain mixture, or easy and frequent solutions of conjugal society would mightily disturb.
§. 81. But though these are ties upon man- kind, which make the conjugal bonds more firm ami lasting in man, than the other species of 256 OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.
animals; yet it would give one reason to en- quire, why this compact, where procreation and education are secured, and inheritance taken care for, may not be made determinable, either by consent, or at a certain time, or upon cer- tain conditions, as well as any other voluntary compacts, there being no necessity in the na- ture of the thing, nor to the ends of it, that it should always be for life; I mean, to such as are under no restraint of any positive law, which ordains all such contracts to be perpe- tual.
§. 82. But the husband and wife, though they have but one common concern, yet having different understandings, will unavoidably sometimes have different wills too; it therefore being necessary that the last determination, t. e. the rule, should be placed somewhere; it naturally falls to the man's share, as the abler and the stronger. But this reaching but to the things of their common interest and property, leaves the wife in the full and free possession of what by contract is her peculiar right, and gives the husband no more power over her life than she has over his; the power of the husband being so far from that of an absolute monarch, that the wife has in many cases a liberty to separate from him, where natural right, or their contract allows it: whether that contract be made by themselves in the state of nature, or by the customs or laws of the country they live in; and the children upon such separation fall to OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 257 the father or mother's lot, as such contract does determine.