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 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.
Sec. 74. To conclude then, tho' 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 tho' that honour and respect, and all that which
the Latins called piety, which they indispensably 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 separate 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 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 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.
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