16 HUME i 



" 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 malad- 

 ministration 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 con- 

 stitution 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. 



