Two Treatises Government John Locke - Faculty of Social Sciences ...

48/John Lockedoubt, from the inference he makes ill these words immediately following,“I see not then how the children of Adam, or of any man else, can befree from subjection to their parents.” Whereby it appears that the poweron one side, and the subjection on the other, our author here speaks of,is that natural power and subjection between parents and children: forthat which every men’s children owed could be no other; and that ourauthor always affirms to be absolute and unlimited. This natural powerof parents over their children Adam had over his posterity, says ourauthor; and this power of parents over their children, his children hadover theirs in his lifetime, says our author also; so that Adam, by anatural right of father, had an absolute, unlimited power over all hisPosterity, anal at the saline time his children had by the same right absolute,unlimited power over theirs. Here then are two absolute, unlimitedpowers existing together, which I would love any body reconcile one toanother, or to common sense. For the salvo he has put in of subordinationmakes it more absurd: to have one absolute, unlimited, nayunlimitable power in subordination to another, is so manifest a contradiction,that nothing can be more. “Adam is absolute prince, with the unlimited authority of fatherhood over all his posterity;” all his posterityare then absolutely his subjects; anal as our author says, his slaves,children, and grandchildren, are equally in this state of subjection andslavery; and yet, says our author, “the children of Adam have paternal,i.e., absolute, unlimited power over their own children:” which in plainEnglish is, they are slaves and absolute princes at the same time, and inthe same government; and one part of the sum jects have an absolute,unlimited power over the other by the natural right of parentage.§70. If any one will suppose in favour of our author, that he heremeant that parents, who are in subjection themselves to the absoluteauthority of their father, have yet some power over their children; Iconfess he is something nearer the truth: but he will not at all herebyhelp our author: for he nowhere speaking of the paternal power, but asan absolute, unlimited authority, cannot be supposed to understand anything else here, unless he himself had limited it, and showed how far itreached; and that he means here paternal authority in that large extent,is plain from the immediately following words: “This subjection of childrenbeing,” says he, “the foundation of all regal authority,” p. 12. Thesubjection then that in the former line, he says, “every man is in to hisparents,” and consequently what Adam’s grandchildren were in to theirparents, was that which was the fountain of all regal authority, i.e.,