theory, it has at any rate the merit of proclaiming that no Government which does not secure at least the tacit consent of the governed deserves to be maintained: further than this, that the more any Government throws itself upon the consent of the governed, the better, the more sacred' are its claims.1 So it is that both Locke and Filmer have their justification: not, however, as masters of the whole truth, nor even as fully possessed even of the half-truth which each was striving vainly to express. The true theory will be that which, finding room for each of these rival elements, shall raise both of them to a higher level and unite them in some wider truth that retains the gold, but rejects the dross, of each.2

Such a theory, Hume believes, is offered by that expounded in the Treatise and Essays. Both the required elements are there represented: the human element, in the plea that the ultimate origin, and with it the ultimate sanction, of all Government is to be found in the felt interest of the governed; the divine element, or what may pass for such, in the admission that no Government can claim to have fairly established itself until the motive of selfinterest has sunk into the background, and its place in the foreground, its place as immediate and effective motive, been taken by the very different sanction of obligation, or duty: of duty to the Government we happen to be born under; of obligation to the particular order in which we find ourselves placed.

In closing this sketch of Hume's political theory, it is well to gather up its main issues, whether as a constructive argument or as a weapon of offence. On the constructive side, it stands for by far the subtlest and most effective attempt ever made to establish the State on utilitarian principles: on the interest of the individual, in the first instance; on the interest of the community, as the sum of all its component members, in the second. In this respect, Hume is not only more logical than Bentham; but, thanks to the qualifications which he introduces, he also avoids the practical difficulties, the necessity of crediting man with incredible powers of foresight and wisdom, which are fatal to Bentham's system and, for that matter, to Spinoza's also. The crucial qualification consists in his bold transition from the principle of interest to that of duty: a transition which makes it possible for him to release the citizen from the hopeless task of measuring his steps, of cal

1 'My intention here is not to exclude the consent of the people from being one just foundation of government, where it has place. It is surely the best and most sacred of any. I only pretend that it has very seldom had place in any degree, and never almost in its full extent.' This qualification was added in a later edition (1753-4).

2 Essays, 11. xii.; vol. i. pp. 444-5, 450; Morals, 11. § ix.; Treatise, ii. pp. 313-14.

culating the pros and cons at every turn, and at the same time provides him with a stronger motive for loyalty, whether to his rulers or his fellow citizens, than can ever be yielded by the shifting sands of expediency or utility. It is in this qualification that we must look for his vital originality. The rest of his theory-as he himself would have admitted, the yet more fundamental part of his theory-is common to him with Spinoza, as well as with other modern champions of utility.

As for his assault on rival theories-in particular, that of Contract-he has the merit of distinguishing, as many have failed to distinguish, between the two different stages at which the idea of Contract has been applied: between the Original Contract L and it is this alone that can rightly be called the Social Contractwhich may be supposed to have united isolated individuals into one community in the first instance; and that secondary Contract, which some have believed to pass between the community so founded and its rulers, at a later date. In the former case, as he justly argues, the idea of Contract is utterly inadmissible. The whole range of ideas expressed by the terms Contract, Promise, Covenant is, of necessity, wholly unknown to man in anything that can be called the 'state of nature.' These ideas imply the previous existence of that very Society to which, according to Locke and others, they gave birth. They are 'artificial' ideas; the virtues corresponding to them-trustworthiness, fidelity to the plighted word, and so on—are ‘artificial' virtues, which could never take rise until Society, itself a wholly artificial creation, was fully formed and its various conventions were already an established fact. The criticism is conclusive, and it would have been well if Rousseau and other later writers had laid it more seriously to heart.

Against the second application of the Contract theory-the supposed bargain between king and subject, between the governors and the governed-there is no objection so deadly in the speculative sense. Hume's own criticism of it is based, as we have seen, mainly, though not solely, on grounds of experience and history; and on such grounds it is evidently untenable. But it would

be idle to repeat what has just been said on that matter.

One more point must be added: a point which has hardly perhaps received sufficient notice. What was Hume's bearing towards the historical method? The future historian of England might have been expected to make liberal use of this method in

1 It is rather unfortunate that Hume, following in the steps of the Convention and of popular practice, should apply the term Original Contract to the supposed secondary covenant between king and subject. See his Essay of that title.

his political speculations. And in those parts of his argument which concern the origin of Society, and still more the origin of Government, he does in fact make considerable, and often very effective, play with it. Yet it is clear that these things lie merely on the fringe of the subject, as he conceived it: that the heart of his theory lay in the doctrine of utility and in the wise qualifications with which he guarded it. Some may suppose that it is among the merits of the utilitarian theory to lend itself to the free adoption of the historical method. And, as an abstract statement, this may be true enough. Unfortunately, the concrete utilitarian— Helvétius, for example, much more Bentham and his following— has been singularly slow to take advantage of this opening. It is the honourable distinction of Hume that, on occasion, he is ready to do so. Such occasions, however, are comparatively rare; and on the whole, his argument would seem to have been cast from the first in a purely speculative mould, to which the facts of history were subsequently fitted, by way of illustration. This is clearly not what is meant by the historical method.

There is, however, one passage of the Essays which leaves a strangely different impression: showing as it does an almost uncanny insight into some of the grounds on which the historical method is evidently rested, and which were to be still more clearly stated by one at least of those who have applied that method, and applied it with unrivalled mastery, to questions of political speculation. The passage is as follows:

'Did one generation of men go off the stage at once and another succeed, as is the case with silkworms and butterflies, the new race, if they had sense enough to choose their Government, which surely is never the case with men, might voluntarily and by general consent establish their own form of polity, without any regard to the laws or precedents which prevailed among their ancestors. But as human society is in a perpetual flux, one man every hour going out of the world, another coming into it, it is necessary, in order to preserve stability in government, that the new brood should conform themselves to the established constitution and clearly follow the path which their fathers, treading in the footsteps of theirs, had marked out to them.' 1

As is usual with Hume, the argument is cast in a more or less speculative form, and he refrains from pressing it more closely home. But the consequences are obvious. If, for the reason stated, there can be no clean slate in politics, it follows that the true life of every community, the true springs of its action, are to

1 Of the Original Contract: Essays, vol. i. p. 452. It is significant that this paragraph appears for the first time in the posthumous edition of the Essays (1777).

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be discovered not by the application of any abstract formula-the Rights of Man, the Divine Right of Princes, the interest of the stronger, the rules of arithmetic,' or any other similar catch-word --but by a watchful study of all that it has inherited from the past, of all the modifications which have been brought about, or are in the way to be brought about, in response to the ever-changing needs of the present. It is substantially the same consequence that was to be subsequently drawn by Burke, and drawn in words which give a startling echo to those just quoted from Hume:

'One of the first and most leading principles on which the Commonwealth and the Laws are consecrated is lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail or commit waste upon the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their Society; hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruin instead of an habitation; and teaching their successors as little to respect their contrivances as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the State as often and as much and in as many ways as there are fleeting fancies and fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the Commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.' 1

What a resemblance, and what a curious contrast! The idea of the continuity of national life is, to Hume, little more than an intellectual perception; and one, moreover, which he never bestirred himself to work out in detail. To Burke, it is a passionate conviction, welcomed with all the ardour of a born conservative, and worked out with unflagging zest, in relation to each new question which came under his notice: to the life of each nation in turn-England, the American Colonies, India, France-that circumstances called upon him to study and make his own.

Such are the main outlines of Hume's political theory. How far, we now ask, is that theory consistent with itself and with the rest of the system of which it forms an inseparable part? How far, again, can it be said to offer a satisfactory account of the facts of that political life which it professes to explain? Both questions are necessary; but they need to be kept carefully apart.

Thanks to his extreme candour, it is easy to show that Hume sacrificed consistency at every turn. He begins by laying down sweeping principles. But as his enquiry goes forward, one after another of them is either explicitly or tacitly surrendered.

1 Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution: Works, vol. i. pp. 416-17.

The main purpose of his metaphysical system had been to deny any creative faculty to the understanding. And the main principles on which he relied for the purpose are two. The first, that all knowledge consists solely in impressions,' which is his equivalent for sensations; what we take for ideas of the mind' being, in fact, no more than a fainter survival of such impressions in the memory of the man who has once received them. The second, that, just as we have no knowledge of outward objects, but only of the impressions which, without any valid ground for doing so, we assume to be caused by outward objects, so we have no knowledge of the impressionable self except in the fleeting moment of the impression and the equally fleeting moment of its recurrence to memory, or 'in idea.' The impression of the moment then, without any reference either to a permanent object on the one hand, or to a permanent self on the other-that is the sole constituent of our knowledge. All else is a mere illusion.

That such an account of the matter plays havoc with our ordinary conception of what is meant by knowledge, Hume readily admits. Take away the idea of identity in its double application: the conviction that the experience which we have at the present moment is identical with the experience which we remember to have had at some moment in the past, and the conviction that we who now have that experience are the same being that had it in the past; take away the idea of cause and effect, the conviction that between two given experiences there is a necessary connection, a connection depending not on the caprice of our own mind-for what else is the wonder-working law of association'? -but on something which our mind apprehends as given from without: sweep away these things, and our knowledge manifestly becomes something much more modest, something much less substantial, than we had vainly imagined it to be. All our knowledge, all our science as commonly understood, presupposes these convictions. Yet we are summoned by Hume to reject them as illusions.

Two serious difficulties at once present themselves to our mind. How can the understanding which is capable of forming such gigantic illusions be refused the credit of that creative faculty which it is Hume's first object to repudiate? And how, in the absence of such ideas as cause and identity, can even the beggarly rags of knowledge, which are all that Hume leaves to man, hold together for a moment? What man would be so foolish as to base even the most trivial action, the most indifferent conclusion, upon grounds so flimsy as that two sensations, so far as his memory served or his power of discerning resemblances and differences went, had always accompanied each other in the same order to his