546 
ON THE ORIGIN OF 
that as long as an independent head of society is personally known 
to all who are submitted to his rule, and is approached as an equal 
unmarked by outward appearances, his authority bears the genuine 
stamp of patriarchy, a form of government from which legitimate 
sovereignty has been derived. 
By tracing the growth of political society and authority, from 
infancy to manhood, we behold, first, the father ruling his family 
with a power which he has received from nature ; then the patriarch 
extending that same power over the distant branches of his family, 
uniting by common interest all their scattered members, and exer- 
cising a species of authority which is removed but one step from 
parental. As society multiplies, so must authority be strengthened 
and a power assumed which shall be adequate to the preservation of 
the common welfare, and to the compulsion of those members who 
would disturb it : thus, the family becomes a tribe, and the father a 
chief At length the numbers of the tribe increase and spread them- 
selves over a wide region : the Chief is no longer equal to the task 
of taking cognizance personally of every transaction ; and a large 
part of this multiplied family no longer know their ruler, but by name. 
It now becomes necessary to extend his power in the same propor- 
tion, to call in assistants, and to delegate to them smaller shares of 
his authority ; while he himself, conscious of possessing intrinsically 
neither personal nor mental superiority over those by whom he is 
surrounded, feels the necessity of investing himself with external 
distinction : he adopts forms different from those used by the rest of 
the tribe, assumes prerogative, and seats himself on a throne. The 
sapling, in its earliest years, while adorned with leaves only, is then 
but a weak and slender twig ; but as its growth increases, and innu- 
merable branches spread widely around, this twig becomes the 
mighty trunk to which nature has assigned the duty of dispensing 
nutriment and health to every spray and leaf; and when, alas, the 
.cankered stem ceases to fulfil its office, the oak of centuries, the 
proud ornament of the land and the admiration of every traveller, 
withers and decays. So, we behold the father and his children, 
succeeded by the patriarch and his kinsmen ; by the chief and his 
