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 enforce
and recompense such a compliance, and is no more power than what a
Frenchman has over an Englishman, 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 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;* 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.
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