peculiar right, and gives the husband no more power over her life than
she has over his; the power of the husband being so far from that of an
absolute monarch, that the wife has in many cases a liberty to separate
from him, where natural right, or their contract allows it; whether that
contract be made by themselves in the state of nature, or by the customs
or laws of the country they live in; and the children upon such
separation fall to the father or mother's lot, as such contract does
determine.
Sec. 83. For all the ends of marriage being to be obtained under
politic government, as well as in the state of nature, the civil
magistrate cloth not abridge the right or power of either naturally
necessary to those ends, viz. procreation and mutual support and
assistance whilst they are together; but only decides any controversy
that may arise between man and wife about them. If it were otherwise,
and that absolute sovereignty and power of life and death naturally
belonged to the husband, and were necessary to the society between man
and wife, there could be no matrimony in any of those countries where the
husband is allowed no such absolute authority. But the ends of matrimony
requiring no such power in the husband, the condition of conjugal society
put it not in him, it being not at all necessary to that state. Conjugal
society could subsist and attain its ends without it; nay, community of
goods, and the power over them, mutual assistance and maintenance, and
other things belonging to conjugal society, might be varied and regulated
by that contract which unites man and wife in that society, as far as may
consist with procreation and the bringing up of children till they could
shift for themselves; nothing being necessary to any society, that is not
necessary to the ends for which it is made.
Sec. 84. The society betwixt parents and children, and the distinct
rights and powers belonging respectively to them, I have treated of so
largely, in the foregoing chapter, that I shall not here need to say any