And of Caligula,
that he openly declared, that he would be no longer a head to the
people or senate, and that he had it in his thoughts to cut off
the worthiest men of both ranks, and then retire to Alexandria:
and he wisht that the people had but one neck, that he might
dispatch them all at a blow, Such designs as these, when any king
harbours in his thoughts, and seriously promotes, he immediately
gives up all care and thought of the common-wealth; and
consequently forfeits the power of governing his subjects, as a
master does the dominion over his slaves whom he hath abandoned.
Sec. 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.
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