§. 121. But since the government has a direct jurisdiction only over the land
and reaches the possessor of it (before he has actually incorporated himself in
the society) only as he dwells upon and enjoys that, the obligation any one is
under by virtue of such enjoyment to submit to the government begins and ends
with the enjoyment; so that whenever the owner, who has given nothing but such
a tacit consent to the government will, by donation, sale or otherwise, quit
the said possession, he is at liberty to go and incorporate himself into any
other commonwealth, or agree with others to begin a new one in vacuis locis, in
any part of the world they can find free and unpossessed; whereas he that has
once, by actual agreement and any express declaration, given his consent to be
of any commonweal, is perpetually and indispensably obliged to be, and remain
unalterably a subject to it, and can never be again in the liberty of the state
of Nature, unless by any calamity the government he was under comes to be
dissolved.
