all.1
Insofar as the magistrate set out to make men better than they are, he must not try to substitute a virtue for every vice. He must not hope to free men from every defect—“this concerns not the magistrate who aims only at possibilities. …” Very often a vice could be cured effectively and safely only by being replaced with another vice, and in that case, the magistrate had to decide only which was least pernicious to society. Hume accordingly argued that luxury, even when it may become excessive and give rise to many ills, should be tolerated because it was preferable to the idleness that would commonly replace it.2
The man of the proper political disposition would confine government to profane tasks. He would expect it to mediate collisions of interest, to enforce and sometimes impose agreements between parties, either to keep out of each other’s way or to engage in some common endeavour, and generally to protect members of society while they engage in their private activities. Where it had to interfere was fairly obvious. The government need not intervene between two neighbours who wish to drain a meadow which they possess in common, because each will know the other’s mind, and both must perceive that if either fads in his part, the whole project will collapse. But it is different where large numbers are involved. A thousand persons could not agree in any such action—“it being difficult for them to concert so complicated a design, and still more difficult for them to execute it; while each seeks a pretext to free himself of the trouble and expense, and woul’d lay the whole burden on others. Political society easily remedies both these inconveniences.”3 In addition, the government might be expected to look after morals in the most rudimentary sense, by encouraging men to be honest and industrious. The magistrate must subdue anti-social inclinations and stimulate industry; and he must check extravagance, corruption, or inefficiency in government. But these are all mundane duties.
An ideal minister, by Hume’s standards, would not then be behaving amiss if, like Plantagenet Palliser, he “passed his days and nights in thinking how he may take a halfpenny in the pound off the taxes of the people without robbing the revenue.” He would generally support whatever furthered tranquillity in society. What that might be, one could not say in general. He might even favour an established religion, but only because without it the country would be plagued by a too diligent clergy—“each ghostly practitioner, in order to render himself more precious and sacred in the eyes of his retainers will inspire them with the most violent abhorrence of all other sects.… Customers will be drawn to each conventicle by new industry and address in practising on the passions and credulity of the populace.”1 By giving the clergy fixed salaries, a government might make exertion superfluous and thus bribe them into indolence.
However it goes about it, government must preserve liberty and peace. The two were not ready distinct for Hume, because he equated liberty with freedom from arbitrary interference. Liberty was wholly dependent on law and could never be reconciled with “illegal violence.” On this point Hume allowed no qualifications—a people governed by a tyrant without law “are slaves in the full and proper sense of the word; and it is impossible they can ever aspire to any refinements of taste or reason. They dare not so much as pretend to enjoy the necessaries of life in plenty or security.”2 The extent of a ruler’s power mattered far less than its legal status. For a power granted by law could never be so dangerous to liberty as a lesser authority acquired through violence.3
In fact, the proper political disposition is summed up for Hume in the belief that ruling is above all the activity of enforcing stable rules of conduct. The true mark of public spirit is not an urge to pursue exalted ends or to make men better, but a devotion to the rule of law. This is prescribed neither by the divine right of kings nor by any contract between ruler and ruled, but by a simple and universal interest in preserving internal peace. Images of mob disorders and the tyranny they brought on were always before Hume’s eyes. He never forgot the unruly Roman populace and how it was used to support a succession of military tyrants. The lessons of Roman history were reinforced by the record of the Civil War in England. And they were brought to life by the chronic mob disorders in his own time: when Walpole proposed his Excise Tax, the noise of the mob outside parliament nearly drowned the debate indoors; there were violent disturbances when French actors were employed at the Haymarket Theatre, when the malt tax was imposed in Scotland, when cheap Irish labour was imported, when gin was taxed; a mob of two thousand stoned to death a witness for an unpopular cause; a mob rioted at the execution of a well-known smuggler; and when the queen pardoned the commander of the guard for firing on the rioters, the mob stormed the prison, released the prisoners, and lynched the commander. Such disdain of the rule of law may gratify the passions of arrogant men, but only, Hume was convinced, at the cost of exposing society to arbitrary rule and chaos. Liberty may all too easily be destroyed in the name of liberty.
Still, one could not categorically ride out revolution. The grounds on which Hume would judge whether revolution was justified were far more complicated and difficult than those defended or opposed by Whigs and Tories. They provided no easy rule of thumb, yet they were perfectly clear:
But tho’, on some occasions, it may be justifiable, both in sound politics and morality, to resist supreme power, ’tis certain, that in the ordinary course of affairs nothing can be more pernicious and criminal; and that besides the convulsions, which always attend revolutions, such a practice tends directly to the subversion of all government, and the causing an universal anarchy and confusion among mankind. As numerous and civiliz’d societies cannot subsist without government, so government is entirely useless without an exact obedience. We ought always to weigh the advantages, which we reap from authority against the disadvantages; and by this means we shall become more scrupulous of putting in practice the doctrine of resistance. The common rule requires submission; and ’tis only in cases of grievous tyranny and oppression, that the exception can take place.1
The burden of proof was on those demanding a change—” ’tis certain that the concurrence of all those tides, original contract, long possession, present possession, succession, and positive laws, forms the strongest title to sovereignty, and is justly regarded as sacred and inviolable.” A break was unavoidable only when custom itself became confused, when the tides to power became so “mingled and opposed in different degrees” that clear possession could be given to none. Then the problem became “less capable of solution from the arguments of lawyers and philosophers, than from the swords of the soldiery.”1
Whether he found a disposition to observe custom determined many of Hume’s judgements in the history. He regarded the king’s prerogative as a species of arbitrary power and was not in the least disposed to defend it as such. But he excused the first two Stuart kings because he believed there were good precedents for the powers they claimed, and that they had not therefore violated the established legal order. If the limitations on prerogative had been fixed and certain, the character of Charles I was such, Hume believed, that he would have observed them. But in fact there were many precedents for arbitrariness, while, at the same time, the people were wanting more liberty.2 As a result, the “throne perpetually tottered”3 and the smallest mistake was bound to be fatal; even after the event, it was difficult to say what should have been done. A king deficient in political prudence had not a chance. There were many parallel instances in history. Much the same sort of circumstances had brought down Edward II. His father, despite his violent invasions of liberty, had met with few difficulties. But the son lacked the skill to manage under a constitution that depended mainly on the king’s personal character. When custom was uncertain the king ought not to be held responsible for all the misfortunes that followed. Kings should be judged only on their willingness to be ruled by custom:
It is a shameful delusion in modern historians, to imagine that all the ancient princes who were unfortunate in their government, were also tyrannical in their conduct, and that the seditions of the people always proceeded from some invasion of their privileges by the monarch … always to throw, without distinction, the blame of all disorders upon the sovereign, would introduce a fatal error in politics, and serve as a perpetual apology for treason and rebellion; as if the turbulence
