e authority over the child--the
right of life and death, as over his servants or slaves; but this was
restricted under the Empire, and in all Christian nations the authority
of the father is treated, like all power, as a trust. The child, like
the father himself, belongs to the state, and to the state the father
is answerable for the use he makes of his authority. The law fixes the
age of majority, when the child is completely emancipated; and even
during his nonage, takes him from the father and places him under
guardians, in case the father is incompetent to fulfil or grossly
abuses his trust. This is proper, because society contributes to the
life of the child, and has a right as well as an interest in him.
Society, again, must suffer if the child is allowed to grow up a
worthless vagabond or a criminal; and has a right to intervene, both in
behalf of itself and of the child, in case his parents neglect to train
him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, or are training him
up to be a liar, a thief, a drunkard, a murderer, a pest to the
community. How, then, base the right of society on the right of the
father, since, in point of fact, the right of society is paramount to
the right of the parent?

But even waiving this, and granting what is not the fact that the
authority of the father is absolute, unlimited, it cannot be the ground
of the right of society to govern. Assume the parental right to be
perfect and inseparable from the parental relation, it is no right to
govern where no such relation exists. Nothing true, real, solid in
government can be founded on what Carlyle calls a "sham." The
statesman, if worthy of the name, ascertains and conforms to the
realities, the verities of things; and all jurisprudence that accepts
legal fictions is imperfect, and even censurable. The presumptions or
assumptions of law or politics must have a real and solid basis, or
they are inadmissible. How, from the right of the father to govern his
own child, born from his loins, conclude his right to govern one not
his child? Or how, from my right to govern my child, conclude the
right of society to found the state, institute government, and exercise
political authority over its members?

CHAPTER IV.

ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENT--CONTINUED.

II. Rejecting the patriarchal theory as untenable, and shrinking from
asserting the divine origin of government, lest they should favor
theocracy, and place secular society