have overlooked the requirements of human society.

54. Civil government is a necessity to mankind, and it is required, mainly, and almost solely, for the protection and benefit of families, for the protection of the family interest, which is the paramount interest in society.

55. Government when thus established and administered by the heads of families, is the best government even for those who have no voice in its formation. It is the best government for the females. and the children, and all others, who do not participate in its organization, or in its administration.

56. Reason, natural law, and the inspired record, all concur in making the male head of a family its proper and rightful governor. His will is supreme, or nearly so, in the household, and he is its only duly authorized and qualified representative when the family unites.

with others to adopt measures for mutual protection and benefit, measures which constitute the civil government by which their joint affairs and common concerns, and relations to each other, are afterwards to be regulated and controlled.

57. Civil government is a natural outgrowth from, or development of, the family institution and bears to it as close a relation, as that of the fruit or the flower to the parent stem. To organize government differently, is to disregard the superior claims of the family interest, and defeat the main purpose for which government is instituted.

58. The conclusion is, therefore, not only, just, but unavoidable, that the power or right to institute civil government, rests with the heads of families, by divine appointment.

59. Political writers when they transferred this right from the hands of kings. to the people indiscriminately, went from

one extreme to another equally erroneous, and there the most of them have remained to the present time, being so occupied apparently with the consideration of the rights of individuals, overlooking their obligations, as not to perceive the superior and paramount claims to consideration of the family interest in the institution of civil government.

60. The doctrine of the divine right of the people in mass, without distinction of sex or age, and such is the doctrine of most modern writers from John Locke downward, is as great a fallacy, nearly, as the doctrine of the divine right of kings.

61. The power to originate or institute government, and the duty to exercise it, rests clearly and logically with the heads of families. Vox patriem vox Dei. being conceded, most of the anomalies and difficulties and inconsistencies which have hitherto surrounded the subject of

This

civil government, and puzzled and embarrassed the best minds, immediately disappear. All those difficult questions which have given rise to so much controversy; the relation of the individual to society; the political rights of females; the majority question as applied to children, and public provision for their education; the right of government to compel abstinence from servile labor upon certain days; the right of revolution; the right to abate such nuisances as mormonism and communism or socialism in their objectionable forms, and other questions of a similar character receive a clear and satisfactory solution.

62. The system of civil government thus developed becomes one of consistency and beauty. The more it is contemplated the more will the light be observed to flow in upon it from all directions. As with every right or true theory the mind, in its contemplation, meets

only with the harmonies, which are ever found in the pathway of truth.

63. A knowledge of the true character of civil government is of equal importance with a knowledge of the source from whence it rightfully emanates. It is to regulate man's social relations, and protect him from the selfishness and injustice of others, to enable him correctly to define and enjoy, unmolested, his right to property, and to proper freedom of thought and action, and, by combined effort, to promote in a higher degree his own improvement and the general good, that civil governments are instituted, and laws enacted.

64. Civil governments may be said to have heretofore principally originated from the usurpation of a few, or by the tacit assent of the many to a government established by a few. Except in the case of our own institutions, the consent and co-operation of the governed has hitherto