The government they had been under
during it continued still to be more their protection than
restraint; and they could nowhere 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 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."
Chapter VII
Of Political or Civil Society
77.
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