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CHAPTER 7

A Matter of Degree

What Hume was really sceptical about is most obvious in his views on politics, with which he occupied himself in the years after he had recovered from his philosophical enthusiasm. He did not forget his philosophical interests, but let them take the more natural shape of a History of Natural Religion, a Dialogue on morals, and the Dialogues on Natural Religion. About politics, he never tried to construct a clearcut theory. There are a few sections on it in the Treatise, but essays and, even more, history were the appropriate vehicles. For Hume’s politics follows no logical scheme and offers no formulas. Although it is consistent in itself and of a piece with the rest of his thought, its pattern lives only in particular judgements. One can discover it in the way one comes to know a man’s character, by seeing him in many different moods and circumstances.

What is obvious at once is Hume’s refusal to see political disputes as a struggle between good and evil. In the essays, where he commented on current issues, no side is presented as entirely wrong or wicked, and disagreement appears to be not only natural to the human condition, but, when properly conducted, useful. This was far from the prevailing tone in the political debates of his day, which circled around Walpole and Bolingbroke. Walpole, no longer at the height of his power, was being subjected to heated opposition of which Bolingbroke claimed to be the leader. Although both sides were really concerned with the details of party government and the developing cabinet system, each sought profound justification in Locke’s principles.

The Whigs under Walpole paraded as the party that had defended the British constitution against Stuart usurpations. Charles I, they said, had deliberately violated the original contract between king and people; Charles II and James II had done the same, and attempted besides to impose Catholicism. William of Orange had restored the force of the original contract, and the Whigs were its devoted defenders. Bolingbroke argued that he and the Patriots were defending Old Whiggism against the party who, having overthrown the Stuarts, later deserted their principles. The liberty of the nation, he said, depended on preserving a perfect balance among the democratic, aristocratic, and monarchic elements of the constitution. But Walpole’s policies had led the Crown to overwhelm the other parts of the government; its use of corruption had given it control of the standing army, appointments, elections, and administration; it had undermined the power of parliament and weakened the possibility of opposition. The true political division was no longer between Whig and Tory, but between the party of the court, Walpole’s party, and the party of the country, who were protecting the British Constitution against a usurping minister. There was, Bolingbroke argued, room for only one party, of the true patriots, the party of the country. If a corrupt parliament refused to assert itself and demand the rights due to it, the people, led by the Patriots, should have recourse to their natural rights and restore the old constitution, or make a new one.

Hume refused in the first place to argue in these terms. The Whig doctrine of original contract annoyed him, not because it was used to justify the rebellion, but because it founded the right to rebel on an absurd notion—that government was first produced magically out of chaos by men who were at one moment capable of nothing but war and at another ready to agree on peace. Already in the Treatise, for all his philosophical enthusiasm, Hume had denied that there was any clear-cut origin of government, or any sharp division between a peaceful, social, and a warlike, pre-social state. Government, like all human things, had grown up over many years, somewhat haphazardly, as a consequence of a variety of events and influences. It was unlikely that men had ever lived as isolated individuals; they had always lived in families, and even if families warred with one another, within each there was peace. The association of families under a single government was brought about and has survived through a combination of force, habit, and rational assent. Tracing the origin of government to the consent of the people conflicted with experience which showed that consent counted relatively little in public affairs, especially when conditions were unsettled, as when a new government was being established, during “the fury of revolutions, conquests, and public convulsions.”¹ Thus Hume deliberately blurred the distinction between governments founded by force and governments originating in a contract, a distinction that had become a cliche of political theory: “The common situation of society is a medium amidst all these extremes.”²

Indeed no argument about government in terms of a right established in the distant past was acceptable. Even disputes about the claims of particular persons or families to the throne seemed utterly unreasonable to Hume. One had only to look into the history of various nations, to study “their revolutions, conquests, increase, and diminution; the manner in which their particular governments are establish’d, and the successive right transmitted from one person to another,” to realize that loyalty to some king or line of kings displayed more “bigotry and superstition” than reason.³ The sort of conservatism that made the past as such a standard was to Hume just a form of revolutionary enthusiasm: “Those who form a pretended respect to antiquity, appeal at every turn to an original plan of the constitution, only cover their turbulent spirit and their private ambition under the appearance of venerable forms.”⁴ It was anyway best not to inquire too meticulously into origins, for “few governments will bear being examin’d so rigorously.”⁵ More than anyone else the English should beware of appealing to the maxims of their ancestors or of remote, uncultivated ages. For the further back one goes, the more barbarous English governments grow: “the only rule of government which is intelligible, or carries any authority with it, is the established practice of the age, and the maxims of administration, which are at that time prevalent and universally assented to.”⁶

It made no better sense to look for a clear rule by giving precedence either to liberty or to authority. Both inevitably have a part in every government. It is only a question of degree, of the proper proportions between them, and that question has to be answered anew each time it arises. Whatever may be said, the people always retain a right of resistance “since ’tis impossible, even in the most despotic governments, to deprive them of it.” In a mixed government it must be so, since the whole point of a mixed government is to allow the parts of the constitution to resist one another. If the people are supposed to share in the power of the government, they must be able to defend their share: “Those, therefore, who wou’d seem to respect our free government, and yet deny the right of resistance, have renounc’d all pretensions to common sense, and do not merit a serious answer.”¹

In any case, opposing all attempts to alter a government is simply foolish because human institutions must constantly be mended. New laws must be passed to fit new circumstances; every law innovates somewhat; and it is not always easy to discover how much a law innovates, whether it merely reforms or makes a radical change. Sheer necessity makes it impossible to keep the balance between authority and liberty unchanged. Under every government, there must then be a “perpetual intestine struggle, open or secret, between Authority and Liberty” in which neither can absolutely win.²

No exalted matter of principle is involved in disagreements over the propriety of resisting the established government. Everyone agrees that where obedience brings on public ruin, it is right to oppose the government with force. On the other hand, no one defends the use of violence in any but extreme circumstances. The disagreement then is only “on the degree of necessity which can justify resistance and render it lawful and commendable.”³ And there is no escaping such disagreement because men have different temperaments. Men of “mild tempers, who love peace and order, and detest sedition and civil wars,” are more inclined to favour the established government, while “men of bold and generous spirits, who are passionate lovers of liberty, and think no evil comparable to subjection and slavery, more willingly risk revolutions.”⁴ The only way out is to find the proper medium between extremes, and that is difficult to do because the very words used in the discussion are bound to be ambiguous and confusing, and because good and id “run so gradually into another as even to render our sentiments doubtful and uncertain.”⁵

Hume refused to argue unequivocally, as Locke had, for a right of resistance. But he also declared Hobbes’s politics “fitted only to promote tyranny, and his ethics to encourage licentiousness.”⁶ No one but Utopians of the worst sort argued, as he believed Hobbes had, that anything short of absolute government would sentence men to endless wars. They thought it possible to stop the tides; they refused to accept the conditions of life which meant to Hume accepting the inevitability of struggle, of unrest, of something less than perfect peace. The Civil War, for instance, ought not to be blamed on the failure of the king’s power to maintain order, nor on anyone’s weakness, but on the unwillingness of both sides to recognize that neither liberty nor authority could prevail absolutely, that they had to be incessantly adjusted. Judicious men, Hume was sure, were always reluctant to consider a conflict inevitable or to pronounce one side good and the other evil. If such men had had the sway of their respective parties, the war might have been avoided. For, “Even at present, many men of sense and knowledge are disposed to think that the question with regard to the justice of the quarrel may be regarded as very doubtful and ambiguous.”¹

A desire to halt the natural movement of life or to escape the necessity of solving problems over and over again never tempted Hume. He modestly wished only to confine the struggle somewhat. To this end he hoped to persuade his fellows that perfect peace was impossible and struggle eternal. One should try to define and limit the conditions of the struggle. But nothing could be settled for all times.

On all other questions that divided his contemporaries, Hume’s attitude was similar. He considered them only in connection with particular circumstances; he credited neither side with a monopoly of truth or virtue; and he reduced the disagreement to a matter of degree.

Even in a matter like corruption, there could be no verdict in the abstract. Hume was no admirer of Newcastle’s practices, and he condemned corruption as ignoble. Some forms of it, he declared, such as pensions or bribes, “cannot be too carefully guarded against, nor too vehemently decried, by everyone who has a regard for the virtue and liberty of a nation.”² Nevertheless, he insisted that the influence acquired by the monarchy from the disposal of places, honours, and preferments, from a form of corruption, was the only means available under the British constitution for checking the power of the Commons. The very nature of parliamentary liberty made it impossible to limit it by law; “for who can foretell how frequently grievances may occur, or what part of the administration may be affected by them?” Yet it was natural that parliament should try to exercise its power to the fullest extent. Accident had provided, at different times, “irregular checks to this privilege of Parliament,” thus preserving “in some tolerable degree, the dignity and authority of the crown.”¹ During the eighteenth century, this irregular check took the form of selling offices and distinctions to the king’s supporters.

If members of parliament were entirely dependent on the Crown, or derived their property wholly from the king’s gifts, they would be slavish. But an interest in obtaining offices from the Crown only made them reluctant to oppose the king hastily or violently. It was easy to attach invidious names to the Crown’s use of its favours, “but some degree and some kind of it are inseparable from the very nature of the constitution, and necessary to the preservation of our mixed government.”² Under other circumstances, like those of a century later, Hume might have found that such practices had grown too harmful, or too useless, to be tolerated. He had not argued for letting the Crown buy support at all times and places, but only for recognizing that under some circumstances it was more useful than harmful.

Problems that inspired others to enunciate noble principles were simply dismissed by Hume. He had nothing very grand to offer on the question: are members of parliament obliged to obey instructions from their constituents? Yet the question attracted much attention later in the century and moved both Burke and Bentham to make some of their most impressive statements. Hume, however, said that the issue was not really about “obligation,” but merely about how seriously instructions should be taken. For whatever anyone might prefer, in fact constituents would always exert some influence on their representatives. And there could be no general decision about how far it should extend. Its character would vary in each case, depending on whether the electors were rebellious and sophisticated like those of London or more like those of Totnes, and whether the issue was foreign affairs or taxes. In each case the question had to be answered differently. And as always, Hume underscored the difficulties of putting sufficiently refined answers into words—“But such is the nature of language that it is impossible for it to express distinctly these different degrees; and if men will carry on a controversy on this head, it may wed happen that they differ in their language and yet agree in their sentiments; or differ in their sentiments and yet agree in their language.”³

It was only natural that Hume should have been denounced by both parties. He refused even to see much distinction between them. He separated what he called personal parties from real parties, and divided real parties into three kinds, parties of interest, of principle, and of affection. But having made these distinctions, he proceeded to show that any actual party was not one of these: even where the parties were personal, that is, united by friendship and divided by animosity, a split in the government would not occur without some real differences of principle. Conversely, even in those factions founded on differences of principle, “there is always observed a great deal of personal animosity and affection.”¹ The Court and Country parties were perhaps opposed on principle, as Bolingbroke alleged, but not altogether. Their disagreements on principles were, after ad, very much heightened by differences of interest. Those who were receiving favours from the Crown were not anxious to antagonize their patron. The others were not perhaps indifferent to the benefits they were deprived of.

Anyway, the principles themselves were never perfectly clear. The Whigs, although they had loved liberty more than the Hanovers, had betrayed liberty, chiefly through “ignorance, frailty, or the interests of their leaders.” The Tories had once loved both monarchy and Stuarts, but the latter more, and in order to “depress” the Hanovers, they had embraced principles close’ to republicanism. The Tories “have been so long obliged to talk in the republican style,” Hume explained, “that they seem to have made converts of themselves by their hypocrisy.”² Besides, no party could be all white or black because “to tell the truth,” men become associated with a particular party for a variety of reasons, of which they are not always aware, “from example, from passion, from idleness.”³

And yet, although Hume disagreed with both sides, and found their quarrels somewhat tiresome, he did not wish to eliminate parties. They encouraged fierce animosities among men who should be assisting one another and weakened the government.⁴ Still, they were inevitable and even beneficial. As the exact balance between the republican and monarchical part of the English constitution was delicate and uncertain, there were bound to be different opinions about what it ought to be. There was no way of settling the question forever because the power of the king varies with the character of the king, and what might suffice to counterbalance the Crown in one case might be too little or too much in another.¹ Most reasonable men might agree to preserve a mixed government, but they were bound to disagree on the particulars. Therefore, “However the nation may fluctuate between them the parties themselves will always subsist, so long as we are governed by a limited monarchy.”² There were inconveniences to parties, but they had to be endured in order to enjoy the blessings of a mixed government.

Instead of endorsing Bolingbroke’s call for a single party, Hume suggested that party conflicts might be softened. He even praised the growing interest in a coalition because it tended “to prevent all unreasonable insult and triumph of the one party over the other, to encourage moderate opinions, to find the proper medium in all disputes, to persuade each that its antagonists may possibly be sometimes in the right, and to keep a balance in the praise and blame which we bestow on either side.”³ But if a coalition had been likely, Hume might have been found on the other side, stirring up party differences. He looked for a moderation of disagreement, not for its disappearance. A balance between evils was the best one could hope for.