§. 238. "The other case is, when a king makes himself the dependent of
another, and subjects his kingdom, which his ancestors left him, and the people
put free into his hands, to the dominion of another. For however, perhaps, it
may not be his intention to prejudice the people, yet because he has hereby
lost the principal part of regal dignity — viz., to be next and
immediately under God, supreme in his kingdom; and also because he betrayed or
forced his people, whose liberty he ought to have carefully preserved, into the
power and dominion of a foreign nation. By this, as it were, alienation of his
kingdom, he himself loses the power he had in it before, without transferring
any the least right to those on whom he would have bestowed it; and so by this
act sets the people free, and leaves them at their own disposal. One example of
this is to be found in the Scotch annals."
