according as the behaviour of this or that child hath comported 
with his will and humour.

     Sec. 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 voluntary submission: for every man's children 
being by nature as free as himself, or any of his ancestors ever 
were, may, whilst they are in that freedom, choose what society 
they will join themselves to, what common-wealth 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 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.  But that this was not by any paternal right, but 
only by the consent of his children, is evident from hence, that 
no body 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 fact, he might condemn and put him to death, 
or other-wise have punished him, as well as any of his children; 
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 
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.  

     (*It is no improbable opinion therefore, which the 
archphilosopher was of, that the chief person in every houshold 
was always, as it were, a king: so when numbers of housholds 
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 Melchizedec, 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 composition between men, judging it 
convenient and behoveful; there being no impossibility in nature 
considered by itself, but that man might have lived without any 
public regiment, Hooker's Eccl. Pol. lib. i. sect. 10.)

     Sec. 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 aII?  It is no wonder that they made no