'One That's More Torrid': The Pirates of Madagascar

Misson Part ii Deism and Family

In Misson's description of government as family, he touches upon (and inverts) a popular paradigm of the age.  Monarchs had long been justified not only as chosen representatives of God, but as benevolent (if sometimes stern) father figures to their people.

During the era of Enlightenment, this would shift. Most famously, Rousseau would articulate (a few decades after A General History):

The family then may be called the first model of political societies: the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the children; and all, being born free and equal, alienate their liberty only for their own advantage. The whole difference is that, in the family, the love of the father for his children repays him for the care he takes of them, while, in the State, the pleasure of commanding takes the place of the love which the chief cannot have for the peoples under him.

http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/rousseau1762.pdf