Hume | Page 5

1740, Hume seems to have made an acquaintance which rapidly
ripened into a life long friendship. Adam Smith was, at that time, a boy
student of seventeen at the University of Glasgow; and Hume sends a
copy of the Treatise to "Mr. Smith," apparently on the recommendation
of the well-known Hutcheson, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the
university. It is a remarkable evidence of Adam Smith's early
intellectual development, that a youth of his age should be thought
worthy of such a present.
In 1741 Hume published anonymously, at Edinburgh, the first volume
of Essays Moral and Political, which was followed in 1742 by the
second volume.
These pieces are written in an admirable style and, though arranged
without apparent method, a system of political philosophy may be
gathered from their contents. Thus the third essay, That Politics may be
reduced to a Science, defends that thesis, and dwells on the importance
of forms of government.
"So great is the force of laws 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."--(III. 15.) (See p. 45.)
Hume proceeds to exemplify the evils which inevitably flow from
universal suffrage, from aristocratic privilege, and from elective
monarchy, by historical examples, and concludes:--
"That an hereditary prince, a nobility without vassals, and a people
voting by their representatives, form the best monarchy, aristocracy,
and democracy."--(III. 18.)
If we reflect that the following passage of the same essay was written

nearly a century and a half ago, it would seem that whatever other
changes may have taken place, political warfare remains in statu quo:--
"Those who either attack or defend a minister in such a government as
ours, where the utmost liberty is allowed, always carry matters to an
extreme, and exaggerate his merit or demerit with regard to the public.
His enemies are sure to charge him with the greatest enormities, both in
domestic and foreign management; and there is no meanness or crime,
of which, in their judgment, he is not capable. Unnecessary wars,
scandalous treaties, profusion of public treasure, oppressive taxes,
every kind of maladministration is ascribed to him. To aggravate the
charge, his pernicious conduct, it is said, will extend its baneful
influence even to posterity, by undermining the best constitution in the
world, and disordering that wise system of laws, institutions, and
customs, by which our ancestors, during so many centuries, have been
so happily governed. He is not only a wicked minister in himself, but
has removed every security provided against wicked ministers for the
future.
"On the other hand, the partisans of the minister make his panegyric
rise as high as the accusation against him, and celebrate his wise,
steady, and moderate conduct in every part of his administration. The
honour and interest of the nation supported abroad, public credit
maintained at home, persecution restrained, faction subdued: the merit
of all these blessings is ascribed solely to the minister. At the same time,
he crowns all his other merits by a religious care of the best
government in the world, which he has preserved in all its parts, and
has transmitted entire, to be the happiness and security of the latest
posterity."--(III. 26.)
Hume sagely remarks that the panegyric and the accusation cannot both
be true; and, that what truth there may be in either, rather tends to show
that our much-vaunted constitution does not fulfil its chief object,
which is to provide a remedy against maladministration. And if it does
not--
"we are rather beholden to any minister who undermines it and affords
us the opportunity of erecting a better in its place."--III. 28.

The fifth Essay discusses the Origin of Government:--
"Man, born in a family, is compelled to maintain society from necessity,
from natural inclination, and from habit. The same creature, in his
farther progress, is engaged to establish political society, in order to
administer justice, without which there can be no peace among them,
nor safety, nor mutual intercourse. We are therefore to look upon all the
vast apparatus of our government, as having ultimately no other object
or purpose but the distribution of justice, or, in other words, the support
of the twelve judges. Kings and parliaments, fleets and armies, officers
of the court and revenue, ambassadors, ministers and privy councillors,
are all subordinate in the end to this part of administration. Even the
clergy, as their duty leads them to inculcate morality, may justly be
thought, so far as regards this world, to have no other useful object of
their institution."--(III. 37.)
The police theory of government has never been stated more tersely:
and, if there were only one state in the