The family has in the father a natural chief, but
political society has no natural chief or chiefs. The authority
of the father is domestic, not political, and ceases when his
children have attained to majority, have married and become heads
of families themselves, or have ceased to make part of the
paternal household. The recognition of the authority of the
father beyond the limits of his own household, is, if it ever
occurs, by virtue of the ordinance, the consent, express or
tacit, of the political society. There are no natural-born
political chiefs, and wherever we find men claiming or
acknowledged to be such, they are either usurpers, what the
Greeks called tyrants, or they are made such by the will or
constitution of the people or the nation.
Both monarchy and aristocracy were, no doubt, historically
developed from the authority of the patriarchs, and have
unquestionably been sustained by an equally false development of
the right of property, especially landed property. The owner of
the land, or he who claimed to own it, claimed as an incident of
his ownership the right to govern it, and consequently to govern
all who occupied it. But however valid may be the landlord's
title to the soil, and it is doubtful if man can own any thing in
land beyond the usufruct, it can give him under the law of nature
no political right.
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