“A royal, or legitimate, monarchy, is that in which the subjects obey the laws of the monarch, and the monarch obeys the laws of nature, granting his subjects their natural liberty and private property. A despotic monarchy is that in which the prince is lord of all goods and all persons by virtue of conquest . . . and governs his subjects as a father of a household rules his slaves. A tyrannical monarchy is that in which the monarch, contemptuous of the laws of nature, abuses a free people and treats them like slaves, appropriating their goods as his own.”
Jean Bodin, French political philosopher, Six Lives of the Republic, 1579
Bodin's discussion of monarchical power best reflects the early stages of which of the following?