What if the prince forbid his subjects to quit his dominions, as in Tiberius’s time it was regarded as a crime in a Roman knight that he had attempted to fly to the Parthians, in order to escape the tyranny of that emperor? Or as the ancient Muscovites prohibited all travelling under pain of death? And did a prince observe that many of his subjects were seized with the frenzy of transporting themselves to foreign countries, he would doubtless, with great reason and justice, restrain them, in order to prevent the depopulation of his own kingdom. Would he forfeit the allegiance of all his subjects by so wise and reasonable a law? Yet the freedom of their choice is surely, in that case, ravished from them.
A company of men who should leave their native country in order to people some uninhabited region might dream of recovering their native freedom; but they would soon find that their prince still laid claim to them, and called them his subjects, even in their new settlement. And in this he would but act conformably to the common ideas of mankind. {p184}
The truest tacit consent of this kind which is ever observed is when a foreigner settles in any country, and is beforehand acquainted with the prince and government and laws to which he must submit; yet is his allegiance, though more voluntary, much less expected or depended on than that of a natural born subject. On the contrary, his native prince still asserts a claim to him. And if he punishes not the renegade when he seizes him in war with his new prince’s commission, this clemency is not founded on the municipal law, which in all countries condemns the prisoner, but on the consent of princes who have agreed to this indulgence in order to prevent reprisals.
Suppose a usurper, after having banished his lawful prince and royal family, should establish his dominion for ten or a dozen years in any country, and should preserve such exact discipline in his troops and so regular a disposition in his garrisons that no insurrection had ever been