Summary:

This takes us back to section 2, where Locke distinguished:

the power of a magistrate over a subject
that of a father over his children,
a master over his servant
a husband over his wife
a lord over his slave

or:  a ruler of a commonwealth
a father of a family
a captain of a galley.

The king is not (as many claimed) a "father" but a civil ruler of a special sort. To make this point,  Locke analyzes the growth of the family, re-defining paternal power as parental power (52),  appropriate until children reach the "full state of equality,"  i.e. age 21 (55, 59) when they have full powers of reason (57) that support their  liberty (63).  This power includes the duty to educate (71).   Parental power terminates, Locke says, once the child turns 21."[T]his is the proper power of the magistrate, of which the father hath not so much as the shadow. His command over his children is but temporary, and reaches not their life or property." (65)    Parents of course deserve "honor" all their lives, but that is a matter of duty, not power.  (67) Locke suggests that "in the first ages of the world, and in places still where the thinness of people gives families leave to separate into unpossessed quarters,"  fathers were regarded as rulers, but "this was not by any paternal right, but only by the consent of [the]children." (74)

Chapter 7: Of Political or Civil Society

If the first society was between man and wife, the second was between master and servant.  Neither of these constituted a "political society."  (77)  Locke reasons as follows:

"Conjugal society is made by a voluntary compact between man and woman," (78), for  procreation, mutual support and assistance and (79) "the continuation of the species," thus lasting longer among humans than other animals (80).  (Interestingly, Locke here describes marriage as a matter of "consent" that can be terminated by mutual agreement, "there being no necessity, in the nature of the thing, nor to the ends of it, that it should always be for life."  (81)  The state (the "civil magistrate") intervenes in family life only to settle  controversies.

In section 85 Locke mentions two sorts of master-servant relations: the master and a free man; the master and a slave.  The "master of a family"  with his wife, children, servants and slaves, runs something like "a little commonwealth," but not a true commonwealth.  Political society is different:  Locke begins by asserting the basic right of each individual: freedom and "uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of Nature." Each of us has "by nature" the power to preserve his property and punish criminals.  Political society begins only when each of its members gives up the right to individual punishment to "the hands of the community."  Thus "the community comes to be umpire, and …. decides all the differences that may happen between any members of that society."  People who are not part of political society "are still in the state of Nature, each being where there is no other, judge for himself and executioner."  This is the basis of the "the legislative and executive power of civil society."  (87-88)  This happens whenever men in the state of nature "enter into society to make one people one body politic under one supreme government," each man "authorizing the society … to make laws for him."  This "puts men out of a state of Nature into that of a commonwealth, by setting up a judge on earth."

If we don’t have this "decisive power to appeal to," we are "still in the state of Nature." (89)

One conclusion from all this is that "absolute monarchy" is "inconsistent with civil society." (90) Monarchy is just a form of the "state of nature" in which the monarch has exclusive and absolute power (91)—that is, in which things are worse than in the state of nature itself.   Locke grants than monarchies can have laws, but that the laws don’t apply to the monarchs themselves but function only to keep peace among the subjects.   "As if … men, … agreed that all of them but one should be under the restraint of laws; but that he should still retain all the liberty of the state of Nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to think that men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by polecats or foxes, but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions."  (93)

Kingship might have originated in one "good and excellent man" being given the power to arbitrate differences, "by a tacit consent," after which his successors, even if less able, retained this authority until people established instead, for their own protection, "collective bodies of men, call them senate, parliament, or what you please,"  to whom all members of the society are responsible. (94)
 
 

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