Propriety and political thought in the Essays of David Hume
K. N. SHEPPARD
Reinvigorating David Hume’s reputation amongst philosophers and historians is, quite
simply, an unnecessary task. In his own lifetime he was praised and paraded in Parisian
salons and referred to as the ‘Scottish Tacitus’. Jeremy Bentham claimed to have received
inspiration and insight from Hume’s work, while Immanuel Kant was disturbed from his
‘philosophical slumbers’ by Hume’s ghost. Peter Gay, in his classic narrative of the
Enlightenment, describes Hume as the ‘favourite uncle’ of le petit troupeau des
philosophes.1 Many modern sceptics and empiricists, in keeping with the twentieth
century’s affinity for analytical philosophy, reserve a place for Hume in their respective
pantheons or claim him as an ancestor in their philosophical pedigree. David Hume’s
reputation as a careful and profound philosopher has retained its currency from his day to
our own.
In recent years, rather than focusing merely on Hume’s epistemology or
metaphysics, Hume has received more broad-based attention for his important
contributions to the philosophy of aesthetics, literature, history and politics.2 I hope in
this essay to modestly contribute to this more holistic understanding of Hume’s corpus by
1
Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: The Rise of Modern Paganism (2 vols., New York,
1966), I, p. 6. For some incisive critiques of Gay’s interpretation, especially as it relates to English
Enlightenment, see J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Post-Puritan England and the Problem of the Enlightenment’, Culture
and Politics from Puritanism to the Enlightenment, (ed.) P. Zagorin (Berkeley, 1980), pp. 91-111; idem,
‘Clergy and Commerce: The Conservative Enlightenment in England’, L’Età dei Lumi: studi storici sul
settecento europo in onore di Franco Venturi, (eds.) L. G. Crocker et al. (2 vols., Naples, 1985), I, pp. 525562; idem, ‘Conservative Enlightenment and Democratic Revolutions: The American and French Cases in
British Perspective’, Government and Opposition 24 (1988), pp. 81-105.
2
Cf. Duncan Forbes, Hume’s Philosophical Politics (Cambridge, 1975); Knud Haakonssen, The Science of
a Legislator: The Natural Jurisprudence of David Hume and Adam Smith (Cambridge, 1981); idem,
‘Introduction’ in David Hume, Hume: Political Essays, (ed.) Knud Haakonssen (Cambridge, 1984), xi-xxx;
David Fate Norton (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hume (Cambridge, 1993); Adam Potkay, The
Passion for Happiness: Samuel Johnson and David Hume (Ithaca, 2000); Mark Salber Phillips, Society and
Sentiment: Genres of Historical Writing in Britain, 1740-1820 (Princeton, 2000). J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Hume
and the American Revolution: The dying thoughts of a North Briton’, Virtue, Commerce, and History:
Essays on Political Thought and History Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 125141; idem, Barbarism and Religion: Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge, 1999), II, pp. 163-257;
Nicholas Phillipson, Hume (London, 1989); idem, ‘Propriety, property and prudence: David Hume and the
defence of the Revolution’, Political Discourse in Early Modern Britian, (eds.) Nicholas Phillipson and
Quentin Skinner (Cambrdige, 1993), pp. 302-320.
1
analysing several pieces found in his Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1777). More
specifically, this essay explores Hume’s political ruminations and the Revolution of
1688. I argue that an exploration of the Essays reveals Hume’s concern to moderate the
political discourse of Hanoverian Britain. Rather than misleadingly describing Hume as a
‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ political thinker, which some notable interpreters have
anachronistically done, I argue that Hume’s critical investigation of British politics and
Hanoverian political discourse in effect provided the Hanoverian regime with a
sophisticated and sceptical Whig apologia.
To begin with, it is important to note that Hume’s Essays represent a significant
component of the completion of the ‘science of man’. He originally laid out this
programme in A Treatise of Human Nature which included metaphysics, politics, and
aesthetic criticism as the appropriate scope for his philosophical investigations.3 The
Essays also reflect Hume’s preoccupation to render his writings ‘political acts’, as Knud
Haakonssen has persuasively argued.4 In the Essays Hume sought to excavate his
political thought from the abstruse thinking of the Treatise – which, in his famous words,
fell ‘dead-born from the press’ – and to redeploy it in what coffee house connoisseurs
would recognise as polite Augustan prose.5 In this regard Hume can be viewed as an
‘innovative ideologist’, as Quentin Skinner aptly puts it, attempting to alter the logic and
3
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature: Being An Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of
Reasoning into Moral Subjects, (eds.) D. F. Norton and M. J. Norton (Oxford, 2000), p. 2.
4
Knud Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment
(Cambridge, 1996), pp. 100-128, at 101.
5
David Hume, ‘My Own Life’, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, (ed.) Eugine Miller (Indianapolis,
1987), p. xxxiv. Cf. Nicholas Phillipson, ‘Politics and Politeness in the Philosophy of David Hume’,
Politics, Politeness, and Patriotism, (ed.) Gordon J. Schochet (Washington, 1993), pp. 305-318; Lawrence
E. Klein, ‘Politeness and the interpretation of the British eighteenth century’, Historical Journal 45 (2002),
pp. 869-898; Brian Cowan, ‘The rise of the coffeehouse reconsidered’, Historical Journal 47 (2004), pp.
21-46; Steven Pincus, ‘“Coffeehouse politicians does create”: coffeehouses and restoration political
culture’, Journal of Modern History 67 (1995), pp. 807-834; Piero Camporesi, Exotic Brew: the Art of
Living in the Age of Enlightenment, (trans.) Christopher Woodall (Oxford, 1994).
2
vocabulary of Hanoverian political discourse.6 For the remainder of what follows I shall
argue, following the work Duncan Forbes and J. G. A. Pocock, that Hume was a
‘sceptical Whig’ concerned to undercut the extremes of both Tory and Whig political
thought, thereby setting the Hanoverian regime on an ideologically modern yet firm
footing.7 The foundation for Hume’s argument was based on his ‘science of man’; a
science which ended with rather sceptical conclusions and an innovative conception of
what a politics of propriety would look like.
Rather than endorse either the ‘continuity’ or the ‘change’ interpretation of
eighteenth-century Britain, I find it more appropriate to acknowledge the ways in which
Hume can be seen to contribute to both of these processes.8 An example of this is Hume’s
critique of the idea of an ‘ancient constitution’, a prominent concept in Hanoverian
political discourse inherited from the seventeenth-century. The Whigs who hailed the
Revolution of 1688 as a Machiavellian ritorno, renewing the ‘original principles’ of the
ancient constitution, used the term ‘revolution’ for precisely this reason.9 For the large
Quentin Skinner, ‘Moral principles and social change’, Visions of Politics: Regarding method (3 vols.,
Cambridge, 2001), I, pp. 145-157.
7
Forbes, Hume’s Philosophical Politics; idem, ‘‘Scientific’ Whiggism: Adam Smith and John Millar’,
Cambridge Journal 7 (1953-4), pp. 643-670; idem, ‘Sceptical Whiggism, commerce and liberty’ Essays on
Adam Smith, (ed.) Andrew S. Skinner and T. Wilson (Oxford, 1975), pp. 179-201; idem, ‘Hume’s science
of politics’, David Hume: Bicentenary Papers, (ed.) G. P. Morice (Edinburgh, 1977), pp. 39-50. Pocock,
Barbarism and Religion, II, pp.163-257.
8
John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money, and the English State 1688-1783 (Cambridge, Mass.,
1988); Linda Colley, Britons: forging the nation, 1707-1837 (London, 2003), Paul Langford, A Polite and
Commercial People: England 1727-1783 (Oxford, 1989); Frank O’Gorman, The Long Eighteenth Century:
British political and social history, 1688-1832 (London, 1998); Roy Porter, English Society in the
Eighteenth Century (London, 1989); J. C. D. Clark, ‘England’s Ancien Regime as a Confessional State’,
Albion 21 (1989), pp. 450-474; idem, ‘Reconceptualizing eighteenth-century England’, British Journal for
Eighteenth-Century Studies 15 (1992), pp. 135-138; Frank O’Gorman, ‘Eighteenth-Century England as an
Ancien Regime’, Hanoverian Britain and Empire: Essays in memory of Philip Lawson, (eds.) Stephen
Taylor, R. Connors and Clyve Jones (Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 23-36; J. Innes, ‘Jonathan Clark, Social
History and England’s “Ancien Regime”’, Past and Present 115 (1987), pp. 165-200.
9
For the historical etymology of ‘revolution’ in eighteenth-century, cf. J. C. D. Clark, English Society16601832: Religion, politics and the ancient regime (2nd ed, Cambridge, 2000), ‘Keywords’; idem,
‘Reconceptualizing eighteenth-century England’; W. A. Speck, ‘Whigs and Tories dim their glories’, The
6
3
majority of Whigs and some Tories, the Revolution reaffirmed the conflation of the
vocabularies of political and historical thought as J. G. A. Pocock has persuasively
argued on several occasions.10 Instead of seeing the Revolution as a reaffirmation of an
‘ancient constitution’, Hume understood that event as heralding the ‘modern’ era of
politics where ‘opinion’ was recognized as the foundation of government.
To begin, the Revolution does not receive systematic treatment in Book III of the
Treatise. Rather, it is a contextual episode within a largely metaphysical work. In Books I
and II Hume had shown that the principles of human understanding were based on
‘custom’, ‘utility’, and ‘interest’.11 Pace Descartes and Hobbes, reason was not able to
account for the operations of the understanding or the operations of government. This
does not, however, automatically propel Hume into the arms of Whig political theory.
Though many historians and philosophers have contended that Hume was or eventually
became either Tory or a ‘conservative’ because he criticised one variety of Whig political
thought, Hume’s treatment of the Revolution is consistent with his sceptical,
establishment approach.12 His nuanced analysis was an explicit critique of Tory
principles while at the same time implicitly critiquing standard Whig doctrine. This
Whig Ascendancy, (ed.) John Cannon (London, 1989), pp. 50-68; Lois G. Schwoerer, The Declaration of
Rights, 1689 (Baltimore, 1981).
10
Cf. J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: English Historical Thought in the
Seventeenth Century, A Reissue with a Retrospect (Cambridge, 1987); idem, ‘The Varieties of Whiggism
from Exclusion to Reform: a history of ideology and discourse’, Virtue, Commerce, and History, pp. 215310; idem, ‘Political Thought in the English Speaking Atlantic, 1760-1790’, The Varieties of British
Political Thought, 1500-1800, (eds.) J. G. A. Pocock and Gordon Schochet (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 246320.
11
Cf. David Fate Norton, ‘Hume, human nature, and the foundations of morality’, Cambridge Companion
Companion to Hume, pp. 148-176.
12
This debate is a prodigious one. Cf. Donald W. Livingston, Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium:
Hume’s Pathology of Philosophy (Chicago, 1998); David Miller, Philosophy and Ideology in Hume’s
Political Thought (Oxford, 1981); E. C. Mossner, ‘Was Hume a Tory? Facts and Considerations’, Journal
of the Hidtory of Ideas 2 (1941), pp. 225-236; John B. Stewart, The Moral and Political Philosophy of
David Hume (New York, 1963); idem, Opinion and Reform in Hume’s Political Philosophy (Princeton,
1992); Frederick G. Whelan, Order and Artifice in Hume’s Political Philosophy (Princeton, 1985).
4
would be consistent, as Duncan Forbes and others have observed, with Hume’s explicit
claims to be ‘above party’.13 One way to demonstrate this fact is to look at his analysis of
resistance, a concept directly relevant to an investigation of the Revolution and postRevolution political discourse. In the Treatise Hume made clear that a prescriptive right
of political resistance was fatal. ‘Such a practice’, he said, ‘tends to the subversion of all
government, and the causing of an universal anarchy and confusion among mankind.’
There was no point in engraving a doctrine of political resistance when cases of grievous
tyranny and oppression would be resisted without any recourse to philosophical
principles.14 Hume re-asserts this in the essay entitled ‘Of Passive Obedience’, by arguing
that only ‘extremely necessity’ could justify resistance.15 Hume carried over this
conclusion to his eminently popular History of England, where, in the context of
discussion the history of the English Civil Wars, Hume affirms what he calls the
‘cautious silence’ of political philosophers over the doctrine of resistance.16 The ‘science
of man’, then, revealed that stable government did not allow for a general maxim of
resistance.
Hume’s analysis of the Revolution ascribed glory to that event for a different set
of reasons than either the standard Whig or Tory accounts. Hume outlines the ‘origin’ of
government and its ‘principles’ in several of the essays because this was an inherent part
of the debate over the Revolution itself. In the essay ‘Of the Origin of Government’
Hume argues that ‘Man, born in a family, is compelled to maintain society, from
necessity, from natural inclination, and from habit.’ Moreover, man ‘is engaged to
Cf. Hume, ‘Of the Protestant Succession’, in Hume, Essays, p. 507; Forbes, ‘Hume’s Science of Politics’.
Hume, Treatise, p. 354.
15
‘Of Passive Obedience’, in Hume, Essays, p. 490.
16
David Hume, The History of England: from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to The Revolution in 1688 (6
vols. Indianapolis, 1983), v, p. 544.
13
14
5
establish political society, in order to administer justice; without which there can be no
peace among them, nor safety, nor mutual intercourse.’ This means that for Hume
government has no other ‘object or purpose but the distribution of justice’.17 The origin
of government is based in theory on ‘utility’ and ‘interest’. That is, once society has
become complex enough the protection of property, which is nearly synonymous with
justice, provokes the creation of impartial magistrates.18 This arrangement prevents the
natural selfishness of man from undoing political society; moreover, the moral
obligations of obedience, justice and allegiance arise and confirm the utility of
government through ‘interest’.19 Hume therefore glosses here the Treatise account of the
theoretical origin of government by referring simply to ‘long continuance’ and the
‘benefit sensibly felt’ under a state of peace. In other words, there was a determinate
point where a magistrate exerted influence but quickly reached a point, through habit,
where ‘submission was no longer a matter of choice’, ‘but was rigorously exacted’.20 In
keeping with his ‘science of man’ Hume conceptualizes the origin of politics based on
‘man as he is’ rather than what he views as the idealizations of the Whig and Tory
theories. 21
Hume undermined both Tory and Whig political ideology by arguing that the
Revolution was not justifiable on Lockean-contractarian principles, nor was it the
‘Of the Origin of Government’, in Hume, Essays, p. 37.
This is a polite gloss on principles originally laid out in Book III of the Treatise. Hume, Treatise, pp.
356-9.
19
‘Of the Origin of Government’, in Hume, Essays, p. 38.
20
‘Of the Origin of Government’, in Hume, Essays, p. 40.
21
This phrase is borrowed from, Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World
(London: Penguin, 2000), p. 533 n89. There Porter cites the existence of many radical works of fiction in
the 1790s which contained this phrase in their title.
17
18
6
reinvigoration of divine or hereditary right, in line with Sir Robert Filmer.22 The
Revolution, according to Hume, needed to be judged by other means: namely, whether or
not government fulfilled its function in accordance with his sceptical understanding of
political propriety. The basis of this criticism is found in ‘Of the First Principles of
Government’. Hume argues that it is ‘on opinion only that government is founded’.23 If
we ‘trace government to its first origin’ we learn that political society was formed tacitly.
It was not to be found ‘written on parchment’ for it ‘preceded the use of writing and all
other civilized arts of life’. Instead we seek the ‘original contract’ in ‘the nature of
man’.24 Government was founded on ‘opinion’ rendering party polemic of both stripes
superfluous and harmful; such political polarity, alternatively described as the ‘rage of
party’, unnecessarily politicised society leaving it vulnerable to extremes.25 Instead Hume
pointed out, through his analysis of political allegiance, that the Hanoverians were as
legitimate as any rulers and that they were adequately fulfilling the role for which
government was instituted. As Hume recognized, this was why ‘politeness’ as a
proprietary political virtue mattered, it moderated and stabilized the political realm of a
potentially volatile political world.
Hume’s theoretical description of government’s origin is accompanied by a
historical description based on probabilistic conjecture. The force of government, he says,
‘is founded on fleets and armies’; this is ‘the effect of established government’. What is
more, ‘Almost all the governments, which exist at present’, Hume argues, ‘have been
The scholarship on Locke and Filmer is voluminous. Cf. John Dunn, ‘Introduction’ in John Locke, Two
Treatises of Government, (ed.) Peter Laslett (Cambridge, 1988); John Dunn, The Political Thought of John
Locke (Cambridge, 1965); Robert Filmer, Patriarcha and other Political Writings, (ed.) Johann P.
Sommerville (Cambridge, 1991); Gordon Schochet, Patriarchalism and Political Thought (Oxford, 1975).
23
‘Of the First Principles of Government’, in Hume, Essays, p. 32.
24
‘Of the Original Contract’, in Hume, Essays, p. 468.
25
Cf. W. A. Speck, Stability and Strife: England, 1714-1760 (London, 1977).
22
7
founded originally, either on usurpation or conquest, or both’. There was no ‘pretence of
a fair consent, or voluntary subjection of the people’; indeed ‘this is all the original
contract, which they have to boast of.’26 This conjectural-historical account accompanied
by the philosophical-theoretical account was an incisive criticism of the standard Whig
and Tory ideologies. Hume’s confidence was based on his empiricist belief that he had
uncovered human nature in its theoretical and historical forms.
‘Opinion’, upon which government rests, Hume argued, was of two kinds:
‘opinion of INTEREST, and opinion of RIGHT.’ Opinion of interest confers legitimacy
based on ‘the general advantage which is reaped from government’ accompanied by ‘the
persuasion, that the particular government, which is established, is equally advantageous
with any other that could easily be settled.’ Opinion of right, on the other hand, consists
of a ‘right to POWER and right to PROPERTY.’27 Hume allows the right to property as a
first principle of government, but argues that it is ‘carrying the matter too far’ to make it
the ‘whole foundation’ as James Harrington had famously done. These ‘first principles’
of government – derivations of ‘opinion’, ‘interest’, and ‘custom’ – are flexible in
Hume’s schema. Though an ancient constitution may have set out an original
arrangement regarding the exercise of power and the distribution of property, Hume
argues that such arrangements are prone to alteration. Hume points to English history and
the House of Commons’ changing place within the English constitution as an example of
such alteration.28 Instead of statically wishing for the reinvigoration of a pristine
‘Of the Original Contract’, in Hume, Essays, p. 471.
‘Of the First Principles of Government’, in Hume, Essays, p. 33.
28
‘Of the First Principles of Government’, in Hume, Essays, p. 35; cf. James Harrington, The Political
Works of James Harrington, (ed.) J. G. A. Pocock (Cambridge, 1977); Pocock, Ancient Constitution and
the Feudal Law, pp. 124-147.
26
27
8
constitution, Hume suggests the more empirical approach of ‘improving’ the ‘ancient
government’ as much as possible.29
This detour into the principles of government and the English constitution helps
us to understand the general stance that Hume took to the Revolution in the Essays. If all
government was founded on ‘opinion’ and originally instituted based on ‘interest’,
questions of divine and hereditary right as well as original contract could be dispensed
with.30 Hume was in favour of normative government where the best form of polity
depended on context. In the Hanoverian context, a world constructed around property
which was in turn equated with both civility and virtue, it made sense that these
aristocratic values should reign supreme.31 Hume argued that the ‘true rule of government
is the present established practice of the age. That has most authority, because it is recent:
It is also best known, for the same reason.’32 He has no problem carrying this sentiment
over to the Revolution itself: there has been, Hume says, ‘a sudden and sensible change
in the opinions of men within these last fifty years’ as a result of ‘the progress of learning
and liberty’. No longer is there reverence for the king, priest or magistrate; and ‘Had men
been in the same disposition at the revolution, as they are at present, monarchy would
have run a great risque of being entirely lost in this island.’33 The change of opinion
about government had followed a change in the make-up of government. This is for
‘Of the First Principles of Government’, in Hume, Essays, p. 36.
Cf. ‘Of Passive Obedience’, in Hume, Essays, pp. 488-492; where Hume destroys that Tory doctrine.
31
Cf. Istvan Hont and Michael Ignatief (eds.), Wealth and Virtue: the Shaping of Political Economy in the
Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1986); Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History. It should not be
forgotten that Hume himself was from the ‘lesser gentry’ of Scotland. For the importance of this
consideration see Nicolas Phillipson, ‘Towards a Definition of the Scottish Enlightenment’, City & Society
in the 18th Century, (eds.) Paul Fritz and David Williams (Toronto: Hakert, 1973), pp. 125-147.
32
‘Of the Coalition of Parties’, in Hume, Essays, pp. 498-499.
33
‘Whether the British Government Inclines More to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic’, in Hume,
Essays, p. 51.
29
30
9
Hume a natural development and recognition of this process is an important step in the
promoting understanding and moderation in Britain’s political culture.
Debates about the Revolution required analysis of the nature and purpose of
politics. It also required an analysis of ‘party politics’ because Hanoverian Britain’s
make-up was largely derivative of the Revolution itself. Such divisions were a
detrimental yet seemingly necessary evil in a mixed polity. One of the types of party that
Hume outlines in ‘Of Parties in General’ is based on ‘affection’. Hume understood yet
criticized parties based on ‘affection’, characterized as they were by loyalty towards
particular families and persons. 34 This was a criticism of Jacobite and Tory ideology
premised on the ‘patriarchal theory’ classically defined by Filmer and given a mystifying
aura by Viscount Bolingbroke.35 Aside from the incomprehensibility Hume feigns for this
political opinion, Hume also indicts such ideas for their susceptibility to ‘zealotry’, which
in turn led to political turmoil.
Hume applies his general analysis of parties in from the essay ‘Of Parties in
General’ specifically in his essay ‘Of the Parties of Great Britain’. So far as Hume is
concerned the Tory position was more difficult to square with the events of the
Revolution leaving them in a precarious position under William and Mary.36 The Tories
had previously deferred to the Court, which cast doubt on their commitment to
‘Revolution principles’. Such questionable commitment stemmed from 1688 because, as
Hume argues, ‘Neither [Tory] principles nor affection concurred, entirely or heartily,
‘Of Parties in General’, in Hume, Essays, p. 63.
Clark, English Society, pp. 114-121.
36
‘Of the Parties of Great Britain’, in Hume, Essays, p. 70. Cf. John Robertson, ‘Universal monarchy and
the liberties of Europe: David Hume’s critique of an English Whig doctrine’, Political Discourse in Early
Modern Britain, pp. 349-73.
34
35
10
with the settlement made and the revolution, or with that which has since taken place.’37
Though Hume notes the irony of the Tory position, he is able to account for their political
sentiments through the principles of allegiance, one of which was ‘long possession’. The
Whig position, countenancing resistance based on the violation of a contract, was no less
troublesome, as we have already seen.
Hume argued that the Jacobites and Tories should ‘acquiesce entirely to the
present settlement of the constitution’. Under the Hanoverians the ‘plan of liberty is
settled’, ‘its happy effects are proved by experience’, and ‘a long tract of time has given it
stability’. Hume implores his readers to ‘peruse the history of past events’ and see that
‘tyranny, and violence, and oppression’ are the ills ‘from which the established liberty of
the constitution has now at last happily protected the people.’38 The Revolution had
brought about a change whereby the ‘people cherish monarchy, because protected by it:
The monarchy favours liberty, because created by it. And thus every advantage is
obtained by the new establishment, as far as human skill and wisdom can extend itself.’39
Hume, to be sure, was in favour of the Union of 1707 and urged contemporaries to
reconcile themselves to the Hanoverian state.40
The Revolution did change the English polity, but not in the ways that either
Tories or Whigs perceived. It was not a total revolution as some Whigs wished to submit,
nor could Hume agree that government was founded on popular consent.41 While Hume’s
sympathy is with the cause of reasonableness, liberty, and justice, political changes in
accordance with these principles should be considered with due caution. In the essay ‘Of
‘Of the Parties of Great Britain’, in Hume, Essays, p. 71.
‘Of the Coalition of Parties’, in Hume, Essays, pp. 500-501.
39
‘Of the Protestant Succession’, in Hume, Essays, p. 506.
40
Phillipson, Hume, pp. 73-74.
41
‘Of the Original Contract’, in Hume, Essays, pp. 472-473.
37
38
11
the Original Contract’, Hume warns that ‘the science of politics affords few rules, which
will not admit of some exception, and which may not sometimes be controuled by fortune
and accident.’42 This had been England’s fate with regard to the Revolution. Both Charles
I
and James II mistook the changing nature of the constitution rendering it ‘necessary to
oppose them with some vehemence; and even to deprive the latter formally of that
authority, which he had used with such imprudence and indiscretion.’43 However, Hume
urged his contemporaries to recognize that the situation had been remedied, and the
deprivations which the Stuarts apparently inflicted on their subjects were no longer to be
seen.
One of the reasons for his insistence on this change was the advent of the rule of
law. Hume explored this argument through an analysis of the questions ‘what form of
rule is best?’ and ‘who should rule?’ These perennial political questions were addressed
in the essay entitled ‘That Politics May be Reduced to a Science’. There Hume argues
that the best form of rule is determined contextually while disparaging any notion that the
question of who should rule supervenes the question of what form of rule is best.44 ‘So
great is the force of laws,’ he observers, ‘and of particular forms of government, and so
little dependence have they on the humours and tempers of men, that consequences
almost as general and certain may sometimes be deduced from them, as any which the
mathematical sciences afford us.’45 This, no doubt, is what is meant by a ‘science of man’
and a ‘science of politics’. Hume then launches into a consideration of the best forms of
government, and does so by exploring such forms as are relevant for an ostensibly mixed
‘Of the Original Contract’, in Hume, Essays, p. 477.
‘Of Passive Obedience’, in Hume, Essays, p. 492; Forbes, Hume’s Philosophical Politics, pp. 263-271.
44
‘That Politics may be Reduced to a Science’, in Hume, Essays, p. 14-15. Cf. Richard H Dees, ‘Hume and
the Contexts of Politics’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 30 (1992), pp. 219-242.
45
‘That Politics may be Reduced to a Science’, in Hume, Essays, p. 16.
42
43
12
polity such as Britain. Using Poland and Venice as ‘ideal types’, Hume praises a form of
aristocracy that moderately preserved liberty and bore remarkable affinity to the polity in
which he lived. These ideal types are also praised because their preservation of liberty
instilled the preservation of property, which is the chief role of government. And as we
have seen, the government’s protection of property is synonymous with the preservation
of justice in Hume’s political vocabulary.
Hume goes on to praise the Polybian mixed form of government. This was
understood to be the form of government of post-Revolutionary Britain by both Whigs
and Tories. Hume praises this form of government, however, not because it is the
restoration of an ‘ancient constitution’. He lauds the Revolution Settlement because, he
says, ‘wise regulations in any commonwealth are the most valuable legacy that can be
left to future ages’. This is praiseworthy because ‘Good laws may beget order and
moderation in government’.46 A state governed by the rule of law was thus a ‘modern’
state; it was also a state capable of withstanding a great deal of political turmoil such as
the rampart party strife of Hanoverian Britain.47 Here is the glory of the ‘Glorious’
Revolution for Hume; instead of dubious political polemic, it instituted a state where the
role of government as the executor of justice was regular and ordered.
A last and important consequence of reducing politics to a science is the
invocation of an ubiquitous Humean theme: ‘promoting moderation’ rather than ‘zeal’. A
‘fanatical’ and ‘enthusiastic’ political polemic, he argues, had grown out of factional
divisions derived from the Revolution. This division was only deepened by the
‘That Politics may be Reduced to a Science’, in Hume, Essays, pp. 24, 25.
Of course, there were moments when Hume openly worried about Britain’s fate, see Istvan Hont, ‘The
rhapsody of public debt: David Hume and voluntary state bankruptcy’, Political Discourse in Early
Modern Britain, pp. 321-48; Pocock, ‘Hume and the American Revolution’.
46
47
13
ascendancy of Sir Robert Walpole.48 There were, Hume notes, ‘zealots on both sides who
kindle up the passions of their partizans, and under pretence of public good, pursue the
interests and ends of their particular faction.’ Hume attempts in the concluding part of
this essay ‘to draw a lesson of moderation with regard to the parties, into which our
country is at present divided’.49 The gist of this lesson is that neither party had the corner
on political truth or political virtue. Instead all factions needed to recognize the merits of
both sides and that, according to Hume, the English constitution contained within it the
‘remedy against mal-administration’; it was most recently ‘repaired by two such
remarkable events, as the Revolution and Accession ’.50 In Hume’s vocabulary the
Revolution proved a ‘remedy’ that demonstrated the flexibility of the mixed constitution.
This was a flexibility that fared well under the watchful eye of philosophical scepticism
and a sceptical ‘science of man’.
The famous idealist philosopher and historian R. G. Collingwood once wrote that
Hume’s philosophy was a ‘reasoned defence of historical thought’.51 With this I wholeheartedly agree. This might not at first glance seem related to an exposition of propriety
in Hume’s political thought. However, Hume like Viscount Bolingbroke, subscribed to a
neo-classical view of history; they both approved in writing Dionysius of Halicarnassus’
maxim that ‘history is philosophy teaching by examples’.52
Cf. ‘A Character of Sir Robert Walpole’, in Hume, Essays, pp. 574-576.
‘That Politics may be Reduced to a Science’, in Hume, Essays, p. 27.
50
‘That Politics may be Reduced to a Science’, in Hume, Essays, p. 29.
51
R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History, (ed.) Jan van der Dussen (Rvsd ed., Oxford, 1994), p. 75.
52
Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Historical Writings, (ed.) Isaac Kramnick (Chicago, 1972), p. 9;
Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Ars rhetorica, XI, 2; cf. Hume, Treatise, p. 359.
48
49
14