ce; that after that term they
become equal, and that then the son, entirely independent of the
father, owes him no obedience, but only respect. Gratitude is indeed
a duty which we are bound to pay, but which benefactors can not exact.
Instead of saying that civil society is derived from paternal
authority, we should rather say that it is to the former that the
latter owes its principal force: No one individual was acknowledged as
the father of several other individuals, till they settled about him.
The father's goods, which he can indeed dispose of as he pleases, are
the ties which hold his children to their dependence upon him, and he
may divide his substance among them in proportion as they shall have
deserved his attention by a continual deference to his commands. Now
the subjects of a despotic chief, far from having any such favour to
expect from him, as both themselves and all they have are his
property, or at least are considered by him as such, are obliged to
receive as a favour what he relinquishes to them of their own
property. He does them justice when he strips them; he treats them
with mercy when he suffers them to live. By continuing in this manner
to compare facts with right, we should discover as little solidity as
truth in the voluntary establishment of tyranny; and it would be a
hard matter to prove the validity of a contract which was binding only
on one side, in which one of the parties should stake everything and
the other nothing, and which could turn out to the prejudice of him
alone who had bound himself.

This odious system is even, at this day, far from being that of wise
and good monarchs, and especially of the kings of France, as may be
seen by divers passages in their edicts, and particularly by that of a
celebrated piece published in 1667 in the name and by the orders of
Louis XIV. "Let it therefore not be said that the sovereign is not
subject to the laws of his realm, since, that he is, is a maxim of the
law of nations which flattery has sometimes attacked, but which good
princes have always defended as the tutelary divinity of their realms.
How much more reasonable is it to say with the sage Plato, that the
perfect happiness of a state consists in the subjects obeying their
prince, the prince obeying the laws, and the laws being equitable and
always directed to the good of the public?" I shall not stop to
consider, if, liberty being the most noble faculty of man, it is not
degrading one'