Note 140 — BOOK XVII.
Reading edition
On this Laing well remarks—“When we peruse the act, and consider how soon the crown was afterwards forfeited; when we contemplate how frequently and happily the lineal succession has been since inverted—we must smile with contempt at the extreme fragility of political laws, and at the anxious precaution with which the most violent of them are framed, only to be disregarded and ultimately broken.”—Hist. vol. iv. p. 119.