try, a great part of the inhabitants are employed in fuch a manner as tends to difperfe the members of a family, and often requires that they should live at a distance from each other.-The children, in their early youth, are obliged to leave their home, in order to be inftructed in thofe trades and profeffions by which it is proposed they fhould earn a livelihood, and afterwards to settle in those parts of the country which they find convenient for profecuting their several employments.— In confequence of this they are withdrawn, and in a great measure emancipated from their father's authority. They are now in a condition to procurè a maintenance without having recourse to his bounty, and by their own labour and industry are sometimes advanced to great wealth and opulence.-They live in separate families of their own, of which it is requifite they fhould have the entire direction; and being placed at fuch a distance from their father, that he has no longer an opportunity of obferving and controuling their behaviour, it is to be expected that their former habits will gradually be laid afide and forgotten *.

WHEN WE EXAMINE THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF POLISHED NATIONS, WE ARE CONFIRM

* Millar.

ED IN THE TRUTH OF THE FOREGOING REMARKS, AND HAVE REASON TO CONCLUDE, THAT, IN MOST COUNTRIES, THE PATERNAL JURISDICTION HAS BEEN REDUCED WITHIN NARROWER BOUNDS,

IN PROPORTION TO THE IMPROVEMENTS OF SO

CIETY.

SECT.

SECT. II.

OF THE AUTHORITY OF A CHIEF OVER THE

MEMBERS OF A TRIBE OR VILLAGE;

OR,

SECOND STAGE OF SOCIETY.

HAVING Confidered the primitive state of a single family of favages, we may now examine the changes which happen in their fituation, after the death of the father, and the different species of authority to which they are commonly fubjected.

When the members of a family become too numerous to be maintained and lodged all in the fame houfe, some of them are under the neceffity of leaving it, and providing themselves with a new habitation.-The fons, having arrived at the age of manhood, and being difposed to marry, are led by degrees to have a separate refidence, where they may live in a more comfortable manner. They build their huts very near one to another, and each of them forms a distinct family; of

which he affumes the direction, and which he endeavours to fupply with the means of fubfiftence.-Thus the original fociety is gradually enlarged into a village or tribe; and, according as it is placed in circumftances which favour population, and render its condition profperous and flourishing, it becomes proportionably extenfive, and is fubdivided into a greater multiplicity of branches.

From the fituation of this early community it is natural to suppose, that an uncommon degree of attachment will fubfift between all the different perfons of which it is composed.—As the ordinary life of a favage renders him hardy and robust, so he is a stranger to all those confiderations of utility, by which, in a polished nation, men are commonly induced to restrain their appetites, and to abstain from violating the poffeffions of each other.-Different clans or tribes of barbarians are therefore difpofed to rob and plunder one another, as often as they have an opportunity of doing it with fuccefs; and their reciprocal inroads and hoftilities are the fource of continual animofities and quarrels, which are prosecuted with a degree of fury and rancour fuitable to the temper and difpofitions of the people.-Thus the members of every single clan are frequently at variance

with all their neighbours around them; and are obliged to be constantly upon their guard, in order to repel the numerous attacks to which they are expofed, and to preserve themselves from that severe and barbarous treatment, which they have reafon to expect, if they fhould fall under the power of their enemies.-As they are divided from the rest of the world, so they are linked together by a sense of their common danger, and by a regard to their common intereft.-They are united in all their pastimes and amusements, as well as in their ferious occupations; and when they go out upon a military enterprize, they are no lefs prompted to fhew their friendfhip for each other, than to gratify their common paffions of enmity and refentment.-As they have been brought up together from their infancy, and have no intercourse with thofe of a different community, their affections are raised to a greater height, in proportion to the narrowness of that circle to which they are confined. As the uniformity of their life fupplies them with few occurrences, and as they have no opportunity of acquiring any great variety of knowledge, their thoughts are the more fixed upon those particular objects which have once excited their attention, they retain more steadily whatever impreffions they have re