government, and all governments have been developed or modified
from it, the right of government to govern cannot be deduced from
the right of the father to govern his children, for the parental
right itself is not ultimate or complete. All governments that
assume it to be so, and rest on it as the foundation of their
authority, are barbaric or despotic, and, therefore , without any
legitimate authority. The right to govern rests on ownership or
dominion. Where there is no proprietorship, there is no dominion;
and where there is no dominion, there is no right to govern.
Only he who is sovereign proprietor is sovereign lord.

Property, ownership, dominion rests on creation. The maker has
the right to the thing made. He, so far as he is sole creator,
is sole proprietor, and may do what he will with it. God is
sovereign lord and proprietor of the universe because He is its
sole creator. He hath the absolute dominion, because He is
absolute maker. He has made it, He owns it; and one may do what
he will with his own. His dominion is absolute, because He is
absolute creator, and He rightly governs as absolute and
universal lord; yet is He no despot, because He exercises only
His sovereign right, and His own essential wisdom, goodness,
justness, rectitude, and immutability, are the highest of all
conceivable guaranties that His exercise of His power will always
be right, wise, just, and good. The despot is a man attempting
to be God upon earth, and to exercise a usurped power. Despotism
is based on, the parental right, and the parental right is
assumed to be absolute. Hence, your despotic rulers claim to
reign, and to be loved and worshipped as gods. Even the Roman
emperors, in the fourth and fifth centuries, were addressed as
divinities; and Theodosius the Great, a Christian , was addressed