inning of politic society depends upon the
consent of the individuals, to join into, and make one society; who,
when they are thus incorporated, might set up what form of government
they thought fit. But this having given occasion to men to mistake, and
think, that by nature government was monarchical, and belonged to the
father, it may not be amiss here to consider, why people in the
beginning generally pitched upon this form, which though perhaps the
father's pre-eminency might, in the first institution of some
commonwealths, give a rise to, and place in the beginning, the power in
one hand; yet it is plain that the reason, that continued the form of
government in a single person, was not any regard, or respect to
paternal authority; since all petty monarchies, that is, almost all
monarchies, near their original, have been commonly, at least upon
occasion, elective.

Sect. 107. First then, in the beginning of things, the father's
government of the childhood of those sprung from him, having accustomed
them to the rule of one man, and taught them that where it was exercised
with care and skill, with affection and love to those under it, it was
sufficient to procure and preserve to men all the political happiness
they sought for in society. It was no wonder that they should pitch
upon, and naturally run into that form of government, which from their
infancy they had been all accustomed to; and which, by experience, they
had found both easy and safe. To which, if we add, that monarchy being
simple, and most obvious to men, whom neither experience had instructed
in forms of government, nor the ambition or insolence of empire had
taught to beware of the encroachments of prerogative, or the
inconveniences of absolute power, which monarchy in succession was apt
to lay claim to, and bring upon them, it was not at all strange, that
they should not much trouble themselves to think of methods of
restraining any exorbitances of those to whom they had given the
authority over them, and of balancing the power of government, by
placing several parts of it in different hands. They had neither felt
the oppression of tyrannical dominion, nor did the fashion of the age,
nor their possessions, or way of living, (which afforded little matter
for covetousness or ambition) give them any reason to apprehend or
provide against it; and therefore it is no wonder they put themselves
into such a frame of government, as was not only, as I said, mos