under no severer discipline than what was absolutely best for them, and
had been less kindness to have slackened. This is that power to which
children are commanded obedience, that the pains and care of their
parents may not be increased, or ill rewarded.
Sec. 68. On the other side, honour and support, all that which
gratitude requires to return for the benefits received by and from them,
is the indispensable duty of the child, and the proper privilege of the
parents. This is intended for the parents advantage, as the other is for
the child's; though education, the parents duty, seems to have most
power, because the ignorance and infirmities of childhood stand in need
of restraint and correction; which is a visible exercise of rule, and a
kind of dominion. And that duty which is comprehended in the word
honour, requires less obedience, though the obligation be stronger on
grown, than younger children: for who can think the command, Children
obey your parents, requires in a man, that has children of his own, the
same submission to his father, as it does in his yet young children to
him; and that by this precept he were bound to obey all his father's
commands, if, out of a conceit of authority, he should have the
indiscretion to treat him still as a boy?
Sec. 69. The first part then of paternal power, or rather duty, which
is education, belongs so to the father, that it terminates at a certain
season; when the business of education is over, it ceases of itself, and
is also alienable before: for a man may put the tuition of his son in
other hands; and he that has made his son an apprentice to another, has
discharged him, during that time, of a great part of his obedience both
to himself and to his mother. But all the duty of honour, the other
part, remains never the less entire to them; nothing can cancel that: it
is so inseparable from them both, that the father's authority cannot
dispossess the mother of this right, nor can any man discharge his son
from honouring her that bore him. But both these are very far from a