ail to
substitute a deputy in his trust; if he hath not provided a tutor, to
govern his son, during his minority, during his want of understanding,
the law takes care to do it; some other must govern him, and be a will
to him, till he hath attained to a state of freedom, and his
understanding be fit to take the government of his will. But after that,
the father and son are equally free as much as tutor and pupil after
nonage; equally subjects of the same law together, without any dominion
left in the father over the life, liberty, or estate of his son, whether
they be only in the state and under the law of nature, or under the
positive laws of an established government.

Sect. 60. But if, through defects that may happen out of the ordinary
course of nature, any one comes not to such a degree of reason, wherein
he might be supposed capable of knowing the law, and so living within
the rules of it, he is never capable of being a free man, he is never
let loose to the disposure of his own will (because he knows no bounds
to it, has not understanding, its proper guide) but is continued under
the tuition and government of others, all the time his own understanding
is uncapable of that charge. And so lunatics and ideots are never set
free from the government of their parents;

/#
children, who are not as yet come unto those years whereat they may
have; and innocents which are excluded by a natural defect from
ever having; thirdly, madmen, which for the present cannot possibly
have the use of right reason to guide themselves, have for their
guide, the reason that guideth other men which are tutors over
them, to seek and procure their good for them,
#/

says Hooker, Eccl. Pol. lib. i. sec. 7. All which seems no more than
that duty, which God and nature has laid on man, as well as other
creatures, to preserve their offspring, till they can be able to shift
for themselves, and will scarce amount to an instance or proof of
parents regal authority.

Sect. 61. Thus we are born free, as we are born rational; not that we
have actually the exercise of either: age, that brings one, brings with
it the other too. And thus we see how natural freedom and subjection to
parents may consist together, and are both founded on the same
principle. A child is free by his father's title, by his father's
understanding, which is to govern him till he hath it of his own. The
freedom of a man at years of discretion, an