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NOTE David Hume on Colonial Secession

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Today's lecture is going to be given by Donald Livingston, Professor of Philosophy at Emory

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University in Atlanta. Very happy you have him here today. Professor Livingston has written

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several books and articles on David Hume and he's going to be speaking to us today about

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about David Hume on Colonial Secession.

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Professor.

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Okay.

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This is a paper basically about the secession of the American colonies from the British

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state in the late 18th century, but it involves a number of themes.

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One is free trade.

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Another is the question of what is the proper size of a regime?

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Should it be a city-state, larger, an empire, or what?

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And then a third is ideology.

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How a corrupt kind of theorizing can distort reality and generate mass enthusiasms of the

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sort that religious ideology in the 17th century created, but created in this case not by religion,

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but by philosophy.

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In other words, Hume is one of the first to understand that the philosophical intellect can generate hallucinatory forms of views of reality and corruption that are exactly parallel to what the religious intellect can do when it goes berserk.

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And this is a new insight, and I think we've since come to see quite a bit of this because the great struggles in the 20th century and 19th century have not been religious struggles, they've been secular philosophical struggles, liberalism, conservatism, Marxism, socialism, feminism, deconstructionism, fascism, Nazism, isms, all of these are theories.

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They constitute a kind of spiritual bestiary, which is parallel to the religious fanaticisms of the Protestants and Catholics and their innumerable sects in the 17th century.

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Anyway, those three themes, what I've given you here is an issue of the Caledonian Mercury,

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in which you'll see on the right hand side the publication of the Declaration of Independence.

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This was published in Edinburgh five days before Hume died. Hume supported complete

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and total independence for the colonies as early as 1768. He was opposed to the Stamp

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In fact, in 1765, and this position was quite rocked, most of us had not even conceived secession by 1768, and as I'll point out, the Bush did not want to accept secession even right up to the very end.

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So the question is, how was Hume thinking? He was the odd man out in Europe, in Britain, on this issue. What were his reasons for advocating secession of the colonies?

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The matter is also complicated by the fact that many people see Hume as a Tory, a kind of Tory, conservative, and you would think that a person, whatever that might mean, if a person is a Tory or a conservative, that he would not have supported secession for the colonies, but in fact, Hume did.

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This again points up, I think, that you cannot infer a person's moral position from their

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theory. But in Hulme's case, I think there is a consistency. But let me just begin by

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reading what I have here on these various themes. David Hulme's History of England was

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one of the most successful literary productions of the 18th century. It became a classic in

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in his lifetime and was published continuously down to 1894 without a break, passing through

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at least 167 post-Humus editions.

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The young Winston Churchill learned English history from an abridged edition known as

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the Students' Hume.

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Yet in the early 19th century, Thomas Jefferson made efforts to ban Hume's history from the

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University of Virginia and to replace it with John Baxter's explicated version of the work,

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What Jefferson called, quote, Hume's history Republicanized, quote, this single book he

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told John Adams in 1816 has done more to sap the free principles of the English Constitution

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than the largest standing army, end quote.

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What Jefferson found intolerable was Hume's subversion of the theory that English liberty

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is the preservation of an ancient constitution and his argument that the doctrine of natural

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right is a philosophical fiction that distorts and subverts political understanding more

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than it illuminates it. What Jefferson did not and could not have known, because he did

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not have the letters Hume wrote from 1765 until his death, August 25, 1776, is that

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But Hume was an ardent supporter of American independence.

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He took this radical position as early as 1768 for the idea of a complete break had occurred

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to most Americans, including Jefferson.

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And he was able to come to this conclusion without invoking the philosophical superstition

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of natural rights or the self-congratulatory, whiggish narrative of ancient constitutionalism.

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Hume's radical position on American independence shocked his friends.

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The Edinburgh Literati were solidly pro-government. Even the so-called Friends of America, Burke,

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Wilkes, Barre, Shelburne, Fox, Dartmouth and Pitt, those sympathetic with American claims

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sought to keep the Americans within the British state.

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On the issue of American independence, Hume stood quite alone among the major British

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thinkers. In agony, Hume had to refuse his old friend, Baron Muir's request, to write

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a letter on behalf of the county of Renfrewshire, advising the king to take strong measures

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against the Americans. At this time, counties all over Britain were sending letters to the

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king asking him to take strong measures. And Hume says this in October of 75.

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Besides, quote, I am an American in my principles and wish we would let them alone to govern

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or misgovern themselves as they think proper."

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What is surprising about Hume's position is that it seems inconsistent with his strong

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opposition to the Republican Wilkes and Liberty movement that wracked England off and on from

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1763 to 1772.

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I'll say a little bit about that, the Wilkes and Liberty movement.

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If you believed in liberty, then you were supposed to support the Wilkeson liberty movement in

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England during that ten-year period. Hume didn't. John Wilkeson, engaging libertine

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and protege of William Pitt, was convicted of seditious libel in 1763 for satirizing

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the king's too early conclusion of Pitt's seven years' war with France. He fled the

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country and was declared an outlaw. Returning in 1768, he boldly stood for parliament from

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of the County of Middlesex in the environs of London and turned himself in.

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He won the election in prison, but it was not recognized by Parliament, though in prison

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Wilkes was elected three more times and expelled three more times from Parliament.

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Wilkes played to the mob and it seemed to Hume and others that the government already

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weak was in danger of collapsing.

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And the forests of elections, riots and demagoguery were two issues of civil liberty that gave

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the cry of Wilkes and liberty some plausibility.

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The government's right to issue what were called general warrants, warrants against

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unnamed persons, and the rights of electors to send their own representatives to Parliament.

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These were issues of English liberties with which the colonists were readily sympathetic.

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So the colonists were Wilkes and liberty supporters.

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The Sons of Liberty at the Whig Tavern in Boston, which included John Adams, sent gifts

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to Wilkes, and one of their members, William Palfrey, wrote in 1769, quote, the fate of

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Wilkes and America must stand or fall together, end quote.

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Counties and towns in the colonies were immediately named after Wilkes, and if you go up the East

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Coast, you'll find the note words of Wilkes County in Georgia, Wilkes County in North

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The colony of South Carolina voted 1,200 pounds, a large sum, to help Wilkes' legal expenses.

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And I think that John Wilkes Booth was in fact named after Wilkes. People were named

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The Apparent Inconsistency in both Supporting American Independence and in Rejecting Wilkes

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and Liberty was well put by Hume's biographer, J.Y.T Greig, quote, How could the same man

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and at the same time be both Edmund Burke and George III?

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How could he defend the colonists in North America for their resistance to the arbitrary

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power of king, ministers and venal House of Commons, and yet attack the old Whigs, the

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Patriots, the Wilkites, and democratic radicals of every sort for trying to resist the same

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agencies at home? So here's the inconsistency. Hume's position, however, was not inconsistent,

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that was the result of a coherent philosophical and historical account gained over a lifetime

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of studying the emerging ideal of liberty in European civilization and especially in Britain.

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Hume wrote a whole history of England just on this question of the rise of liberty really

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in Britain. Hume was a lifelong Republican and in the essay Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,

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He even sketched out an ideal republic, which had a considerable influence on the federalism

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of Madison and Hamilton, but Hume did not think that monarchy was an illegitimate form

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of government. The civilizing forces of modernity had improved the character of monarchies and

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republics, he thought, so that property and the rule of law were as about as secure in

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the so-called absolute monarchy of France as in republics. Whether a modern state should

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In the case of Britain, however, he was convinced that constitutional monarchy would for some time be the best arrangement, and it was in part for this reason that he was opposed to the Wilkes movement, containing, as it did, subversive republican themes.

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Indeed, the British Constitution already contained a strong republican element and human thought that should monarchy collapse in Britain, the republic that would emerge would resemble more the oppressive republic of Oliver Cromwell than a regime of ordered liberty.

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Quote, he wrote to his nephew, such fools are they who perpetually cry out liberty and think to augment it by shaking off the monarchy. End quote.

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Now, just what kind of republic Britain might become was intimated in the phenomenon of William Pitt,

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who had framed a vision of a great mercantile empire based on an irresistible British naval force.

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It was said of Pitt that he was the first to combine war and commerce in a coherent whole in modern times.

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I'm not sure that's true, but that's what was said.

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Neither the young George III nor the indolent Whig magnates shared this vision, but it had

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enormous appeal to the commercial classes centered in London. Pitt, by tying it to eloquent

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speeches about British liberty and French slavery, was able to touch nationalistic sentiments

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and endow the vision with a certain moral grandeur. The empire began to take shape around

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from the Seven Years' War, largely conceived and engineered by Pitt himself.

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We may think of this as the First World War, this is how I conceive of it, in so far as

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it was a scene of coordinated engagements fought all over the globe.

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French sea power received a blow from which it never recovered, and when the smoke cleared

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Britain possessed Canada and it increased its empire east and west.

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George III ended the war before Pitt's plan was complete.

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This threw Pitt into bitter opposition, and he turned to his power base, which was the

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commercial interests centered in London.

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It was to this popular audience outside of Parliament that all of Pitt's speeches in

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Parliament were directed, prompting Samuel Johnson's quip that whereas Walpole was a

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John Wilkes was a protégé of Pitt and had joined him in opposition because of the too

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early ending of the war.

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It was his satirical treatment of the King's pacifist policy towards France and of the

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corrupting influence of the young King by the Scottish Lord Bute that drew the charge

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of seditious libel.

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Wilkes' arrest and conviction led to protests among the London commercial interests who

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had supported Pitt's war policies.

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It was this audience to which Pitt appealed upon his return as an outlaw, and it was this

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audience that four times sent him to Parliament and were outraged when four times he was expelled.

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During the nearly decade-long Wilkes and Liberty riots, there was dark talk of overthrowing

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the monarchy.

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The King and his ministers were openly insulted, not only by the populace but by the mayor

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of London and other leading officials. On one occasion 500 constables were needed just

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to escort the king to Parliament. London was clearly radical and republican in its sentiments,

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and in Hume's view had become a kind of republic within the realm which threatened to topple

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the monarchy and dominate the whole. Now Hume's argument against the pit, Wilkes and liberty

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Business is the following. First, he argued in his philosophical and historical writings

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against governments comprehending a vast territory, or what were called in the 18th century, empires.

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An empire is just a large territory, sorry, a government over a vast territory. Quote

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from here, extended governments soon become absolute, and a large government is accustomed

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by degrees to tyranny." Further, and this is interesting, Hume thought that Republican

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empires were more oppressive than monarchical. This is an important point. If you're going

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to have an empire, it ought to be a monarchy as opposed to a republic. Republics are better

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in their own right, but they should never be empires. Why? The reason is that the king

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In a manner, an empire has an interest in treating his subjects as equal.

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Republics, however, require homogeneity and majority rule.

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The people are sovereign in a republic. When a republic takes on the form of empire over a vast territory,

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a distinction must be made between the true people and the provinces.

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This distinction will always come up.

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And Hume says, quote, such a government will be sure to contrive matters by restrictions on trade and by taxes so as to draw some private as well as public advantage from the provinces.

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Hume compared the oppressive treatment of Corsica when it was under the Republic of Genoa with the milder treatment it received after being conquered by the French monarchy.

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and also he talked about the Roman Republic and how it was more oppressive than the Roman Empire, bad as both were.

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Closer to home is the oppression of Ireland by Britain, he said.

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Strictly speaking, Britain is not a republic, but the republican element has so hedged in the monarchy and Britain has to make it virtually one.

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The oppression of Ireland, he thinks, is especially remarkable because, quote,

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Charles Quote, being in good measure people from England, one would expect it to receive

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better treatment than that of a conquered province. He thought the same was true of

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the American colonies. They and the Irish were in the same position. A Republican mercantile

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empire tends to centralization and consolidation of all independent political life. All powers

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Enormous cities are destructive to society, beget vice and disorder of all kinds, starve

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the remoter provinces and even starve themselves by the prices to which they raise all provisions.

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This natural tendency of mercantile empires is made worse by the late 17th century discovery

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of Public Credit, a practice to which Hume was adamantly opposed and about which he wrote

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a brilliant public choice type criticism in the essay of public credit. If you haven't

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read that, it's a nice little essay. It's beautiful and it's at the very beginning

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of public credit. Not the very beginning, but early in the career of public credit and

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Hume has a bead on exactly what's going to happen with it. One deleterious effect of

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public credit is that it enriches the power and privileges of the city at the expense

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for the Provinces, and in the case of republics or limited monarchies, the immense greatness

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of cities, quote, under a government which admits non-discretionary power, renders the

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people factuous, mutinous, and so on.

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This was published, this quote was published, this essay was published in 1752, four years

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before the outbreak of Pitt's Seven Years War.

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The nation was left with an unprecedented public debt, staggering by the time, and a

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vast mercantile empire to protect against a humiliated France, which meant further wars

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and more debt. It was to pay for this debt that the parliament turned to the colonies

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as a permanent source of revenue. The expanding empire and the cost of financing it had increased

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the power and independence of London beyond what Hume could have imagined in 1752, when

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He had already judged that, quote, the head is undoubtedly too large for the body, end

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quote. Far from being inconsistent then, Hume's support for American independence and his

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rejection of Wilkes and liberty are two aspects of the same criticism of the British polity.

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Hume defended the integrity of provincial life as the cradle of moral character. Hume

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He was a moral sentiment theorist, and morality for him comes from human sentiments, and these require parochial background and training.

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He was opposed to the ever-increasing centralization and consolidation demanded by the modern state.

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The commercial interests centered in London, which was the base of support for Pitt and Wilkes, was the hub of a vast mercantile empire conducted by war and financed by public credit.

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Hume was opposed to big cities. He theorized that no city could really grow beyond 700,000 people without becoming inhumane.

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That was his idea of the limit of the city. Of course, Plato had a limit of, what, 10,000 or something.

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He was opposed to big cities, big government, empire, mercantile wars and public credit.

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His solution was to reduce the size of all of these enormities by dismantling the empire

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east and west and by following a policy of free trade.

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In July of 1768, when Wilkes and Liberty was in full swing, Hume entertained a fantasy in

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one of his letters that ties all of these themes together.

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Speaking of these riots in London, he says the following, quote, These are fine doings

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in America, oh how I long to see America, and the East Indies revolted totally and finally.

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The revenue reduced to half, public credit fully discredited by bankruptcy, the third

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of London in ruins and the rascally mob subdued.

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Over a year later, the same fantasy appears in a letter to his publisher, William Strong.

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Notwithstanding my age, I hope to see a public bankruptcy, the total revolt of America, the

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The expulsion of the English from the East Indies, the diminution of London to less than a half, and the restoration of the government to the king, nobility and gentry of this realm.

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He did not think that American independence would much affect British manufacturers.

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A forced and everyday more precarious monopoly of about six or seven hundred thousand pounds

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a year of manufacturers was not worth contending for, he said.

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And he thought that Britain could preserve the greater part of this trade even if the

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ports of America were open to all nations.

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Not only was war unprofitable, Hume did not think by 1775 when it was clear that the colonists

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It is worth quoting in full Hume's sketch of the barbarous path that Britain must follow

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in order to subdue the colonists, quote,

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Arbitrary power can extend its oppressive arm to the antipodes, but limited government

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can never be upheld at a distance, even where no disgusts have intervened, much less where

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such violent animosities have taken place.

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We must therefore annul all the charters of the colonies, abolish every democratic power

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in every colony, repeal the habeas corpus act with regard to them, invest every governor

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with full discretionary or arbitrary powers, confiscate the estates of all the chief planters

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and hang three-fourths of their clergy. To execute such acts of destructive violence,

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20,000 men will not be sufficient, nor 30,000 to maintain them, and so widened and disjointed

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of the Territory, end quote.

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Now, well, we're running out here, but Alan Ramsey, court painter to George III,

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we did a famous portrait of Hume and other people as well,

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wrote a pamphlet on the war and he advocated a scorched earth policy,

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Just this very policy. That a garrison of 10,000 be placed in New York, and that the British Navy go up and down the coast, burning everything, and before the Continental Army could get to the place, it would drop down and do the same thing, until it had leveled the place, and then they could invest it with the proper people.

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George III didn't take him up on that. So what Hume describes here wasn't actually war policy.

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But what Hume describes has become war policy since. In other words, the idea of total war is quite common now.

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And Ramsey gives an interesting argument for this barbarous kind of war. He says somebody's going to object to this as inhumane.

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He said, now consider though, we were on the coast of France in the Seven Years' War, and we did not attack the French people. Why not?

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His answer was that we were at war with the king of France's army. We were not at war with the French people, but with the king's army.

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He says, however, the Americans are Republicans, and the people are sovereign. You always fight the sovereign, right?

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Since the people are sovereign, you're at war with every American.

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Just as in the French war, you're at war with the sovereign, who's the king.

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And therefore, total war is morally justified on those grounds.

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This is a kind of interesting twist to the Republican argument, you see.

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Now you can talk of war against the Germans. You can fight a war against the Japanese and so on.

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That's not human, though.

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No, that's Alan Ramsey.

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Well, this was the path that a more ruthless Lincoln would follow with better success two

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generations later in coercing the southern states whose economies depended on free trade

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back into the high tariff protectionist New York-Chicago industrial axis known as the

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American system, that is to say, Henry Clay's union of big government with big business.

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From an economic point of view, the southern case was stronger than that of the colonies.

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The new British taxes were not heavy, and there was widespread support for keeping them reasonable.

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Indeed, the famous tea tax was so contrived that even with it the colonists paid less for tea than the English.

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The colonists seceded not because of exploitation, but because of the prospect of it.

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The South seceded because of both.

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Most of American exports, this is a little brief thing about southern secession just to give you a comparison.

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Most of American exports came from the South, which exported about three-fourths of what it produced.

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According to antebellum Northern economists, the South accounted at times for three-fourths of the Federal revenue,

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which contained a surplus, most of which a Northern majority appropriated for improving its industrial infrastructure.

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The North could absorb only a small part of what the South produced.

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The result was a steady flow of wealth from the south to the north.

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Even worse, southern trading partners whose manufactured goods were effectively shut out

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were compelled to look for staples elsewhere, thereby depressing southern wages.

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A form of consolidated mercantilism more severe than anything generated by the London of Pitt

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and Wilkes triumphed when the Army of Northern Virginia was finally brought to bay at Appomattox.

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The South was not only pinned to the Union of Bannettes, its social and political order

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was totally destroyed in a manner similar to what Hume predicted must happen to the colonies

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in any successful attempt by a, quote, free state to coerce its provinces back into the

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Union.

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In addition to 12 years of military occupation, plundering and ideological reconstruction,

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the tariff was kept at around 40 percent every year, but two, until Woodrow Wilson was elected

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President. And that was devastating for an area that was agrarian. And southern industrial

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development was discouraged by discriminatory commercial regulations such as the pricing

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of steel and freight charges that discriminated against southern manufacturers. These were

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not abolished until around 1940. The South had a flourishing economy in 1860. The Confederate

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states had the third largest economy of any nation on the European or American continent.

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It led every nation in the world in per capita railroad mileage except the North.

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Under discriminatory trade and taxing policies, the South became a colony of a Northern Industrial

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Republican Empire, just as Hume said it, and it's the kind of empire he's talking about,

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the worst kinds of the Republican time.

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As the North industrialized, the number of farms during the period up to 1930 steadily

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decreased in the North.

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In the South, the number actually increased, but these were tenant farms, offering little

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more than a form of serfdom. In 1860, some 80% of farms in some of the counties that

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have been studied in the Deep South were operated by owners. By 1930, only around 37% were owned,

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and most of these were heavily mortgaged. Many of the unjust regulations leading to

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These were just the sort of discriminations that Hume said a Republican Empire would contrive

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by, quote, restrictions on trade and by taxes so as to draw some private as well as public

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advantage from their conquests.

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Hume's Extended Republic is not inconsistent with what he said against large government

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over a vast territory.

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of this sort he calls empire, and the extended republic falls considerably short of that.

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He limits it to the size of England or France. However, the American Federation of States

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in 1787 was an empire in the 18th century term. It was vast, and it was made up of republics

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that were the size of Hume's extended republic. Virginia is about the size of England, roughly,

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and everything he wrote in politics points to an argument against consolidating a vast

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political order of that sort into a single nationalist regime.

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Insofar as inferences can be drawn from political principles, it is reasonable to think that

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Hume would have supported the Articles of Confederation as a solution to the problems

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in terms of macro-political order, and that he would have been an anti-Federalist in 1787.

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You can't actually know that, but if we can generate some principles, that's reasonable.

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Every worthwhile theory of the ideal state contains a story about how it will collapse.

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Plato's Republic has a story about how it will collapse, block, and so on.

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Jung fixes on two distempers in modern politics, which if not checked,

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will subvert the liberty of modern extended republics.

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One is ideological fanaticism, and the other is the tendency of modern states to unite war and commerce into a project of imperial expansion.

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To counter this latter tendency, Hume wrote into the Constitution of his extended republic,

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quote, a fundamental law against conquests, end quote. That's part of the Constitution. This regime cannot expand.

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He warned, quote, that extensive conquests when pursued must be the ruin of every free government and of the more perfect government sooner than the imperfect because of the very advantages which the former possess above the latter.

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As the extended republic expands, two contrary tendencies are generated, one towards secession

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and the other toward an oppressive consolidation by one section over the others.

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By 1850, in less than 50 years, the United States had swollen to some 10 times its original

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size.

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It was evidently time either to renegotiate the union of so vast a territory with such

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different and conflicting interests or for one ambitious and powerful section to conquer

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When the Free State of Britain faced this tension between secession and consolidation

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in its far-flung territories after 1763, it chose consolidation, and the Americans seceded.

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Lincoln, in his refusal to receive Confederate commissioners, and consequently in his refusal

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to negotiate a trade treaty and payment for Federal property so that commerce would receive

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little disruption, also chose consolidation and coercion, just as the British have done.

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Hume, however, favored secession. As he put it to his astonished friend, William Starr,

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in October of 1775, he said, quote, Let us therefore lay aside all anger, shake hands,

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or if we retain any anger, let it only be against ourselves for our past folly and against

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that wicked madman pit who has reduced us to our present condition."

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But the greatness of mind discovered in this judgment was beyond the venal House of Commons

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in 1775 and the equally venal Northern Industrial Congress in 1860, neither of which could tolerate

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and Policy of Free Trade and Self-Government, even though the economic prosperity of neither

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would have been seriously affected. But as Hume dryly observed, quote, republics have

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ambition as well as individuals, end quote. It is ironic, and this is to conclude, it

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It is ironic that Jefferson had a hand in both of the two sources of destruction that

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Hume had found to be eminent in the modern extended republic, hubristic expansion and

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ideological enthusiasm.

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It was Jefferson who first expanded the republic and he did so not by the method of concurrent

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majority that had been so successfully used under the Articles of Confederation to solve

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conflicts over the Western Territories, where Maryland was able to hold out veto, but by

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a simple majority of Congress.

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The New England Federalists were right to insist that the Louisiana Purchase Territory

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and the admission of Louisiana as a state required at least a constitutional amendment,

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and they were right also to consider secession as a remedy.

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To Jefferson's credit, it must be said that though he was an expansionist, he was no consolidationist,

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and from the first he was willing to consider secession as a remedy to the problem of size.

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Concerning the New England secession movements of 1803, 1807, 1809, 1812, 1814, Jefferson wrote,

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If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation to a continuance in the Union, I have no hesitation in saying that I separate."

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and so on.

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The second source of collapse, aside from expansion, in modern republics, extended republics, is

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ideology, that Hume fixes on.

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This is a peculiar, peculiarly modern distemper.

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He thinks that modern secular ideologies are unique in history, in generating mass enthusiasms.

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Hume had a rationalistic strain that occasionally corrupted his otherwise sound moral and political

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instincts. He was fond of the philosophic superstition that there are natural rights

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independent of inherited social conditioning. A doctrine exploded by Hume in an essay of

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the original contract. He proudly wrote these into the Declaration of Independence. But rationalist

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doctrines such as natural rights are blank checks on which can be written anything that

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of Power, Circumstance, Audacity, and Lack of Shame can establish.

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Lincoln took Jefferson's doctrine that all men are created equal and incorporated it into

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the Constitution as its telos, transubstantiating it by an act of philosophical alchemy from

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a fundamental law marking out the division of authority between independent moral and

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political communities and the central government created by them for limited purposes into

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to a consolidated nationalist regime modeled on the French Revolution.

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Henceforth, America would be a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, and its resources put forth for that.

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In this regime, deracinated individuals, now emancipated from their state and local authorities, could be viewed as a standing reserve of human resources

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for the millenarian project of pursuing an ever-elusive, antonomic proposition about equality.

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It never occurred to Jefferson that public speech about ahistorical natural rights could

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be used to destroy the independent moral and political communities of the states in favor

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of a consolidated nationalist imperial.

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How to account for this philosophical innocence?

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Rationalism is philosophy in its adolescence.

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The adolescent seeks two things, self-determination and certainty.

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, is a certainty.

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But certainty attaches only to abstractions, which are mere aspects of experience and not

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the whole of experience.

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Nothing intellectually deep is self-evident.

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A political philosophy founded on truth self-evident to every adolescent is a politics fit only

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for adolescents. Unhappily, post-bellum American political culture is heavily infected with

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rationalism in the form of an increasingly left-directed liberalism. This strange form

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of self-imposed innocence is difficult for wisdom from the adult philosophical world

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to Penetrate, wrapped as it conceives itself to be in the mantle of reason.

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Rather than suppress Hume's history of England as an ideological threat to the young confederation

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as Jefferson tried to do in Virginia, he would have done well to have studied more carefully

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the subtle and profound criticism of rationalism contained therein.

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So we begin with Hume's oppression of Hume's history at Virginia and we end with the suggestion

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that he should have read it more carefully.

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If he was interested in liberty.

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Wow, wow, wow.

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Very, very interesting.

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I'm not sure where to begin on all this.

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I never thought of David Hume as an agrarian sort, but the way you described him, a lot

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of his positions on issues, everything from government to the size of cities.

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Well we have to realize that Bolton and Watts sold their first steam engine in 1775, so we

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We can say that the Industrial Revolution begins there. It doesn't really appear as a phenomenon until around the 1820s, 1910 or something.

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I think the term comes about around there. I'm not sure. So, Hume is pre-industrial, first of all.

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He has to be agrarian because there's nothing else.

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I mean, he believes in commerce. He believes in whatever light manufacturing, whatever manufacturing they have,

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which is done by human labor mainly, water and air, power, so yeah, I think that he, I think Adam Smith too, I think his economics is pre-industrial.

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It's, given his positions, it does seem strange that he wouldn't support the Wilkes and Liberty

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movement, is that what you described it?

387
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I mean, it seemed like they were basically arguing for similar points of view.

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Well, to support that, to support the Wilkes and Liberty movement, he would have to support

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Pitt's mercantile policy. See, Wilkes was a protégé of Pitt, and the forces that were

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generating this movement were forces who had an interest in the mercantile empire. So in

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criticizing Wilkes and Liberty, he was criticizing the mercantile empire. See, this is a case

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These where slogans such as liberty can become ritualistic superstitions.

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This is the problem that Hume put his finger on, and we still don't understand this.

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They can become ritualistic superstitions.

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You have to ask, what does liberty mean?

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What is this liberty that the Wilkes and Liberty thing is a part of?

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It's a liberty tied to this mercantile empire.

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He's interested in free trade. He's opposed to empires of his kind. So that's why he supports the colonies.

399
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Now the colonies are supporting Wilkes. They think their liberty is tied to the Wilkes and Liberty business.

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Hume would say that they don't understand their own interests and of course they weren't supporting secession.

401
00:43:38.440 --> 00:43:40.440
He was. Hume was.

402
00:43:40.440 --> 00:43:41.440
The colonists weren't.

403
00:43:41.440 --> 00:43:44.440
They were not supporting secession early. Hume was.

404
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His views, I would say, were more advanced than either the Friends of America and Britain or the Americans.

405
00:43:50.440 --> 00:43:58.440
So the Wilkes and Liberty movement would be more tied to Republicans as in Lincoln and that sort of thing, mercantilists.

406
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Yes, absolutely. Oh, yes, absolutely.

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I mean, Pittsburgh, the whole point of that Seven Years of War was to establish a blue water empire of commerce, protected by the Navy, and to pay for it by the public debt.

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00:44:12.440 --> 00:44:29.440
Human never had a chance to comment on the Declaration as such, but he died. Would he have thought it on net a good thing, as just a piece of writing in political philosophy?

409
00:44:29.440 --> 00:44:39.240
Well, it's hard to say. I mean, he of course supported independence, right? So, this is

410
00:44:39.240 --> 00:44:44.240
quite in keeping with what he advocated. He would have seen it as a secession document.

411
00:44:44.240 --> 00:44:49.280
It's a document in which the bands that connect one people are separated from another people,

412
00:44:49.280 --> 00:44:55.880
right? It's not a doctrine of individual rights so much as it's a doctrine of justifying

413
00:44:55.880 --> 00:45:02.180
The separation of one political society from another, so the entities involved are corporate

414
00:45:02.180 --> 00:45:07.680
bodies from political societies, but I'm not sure if that helps.

415
00:45:07.680 --> 00:45:15.880
Well, but on the equality point and natural rights, I guess I'm trying to understand

416
00:45:15.880 --> 00:45:23.180
Hume's temperament. If he thought that the secession of America was based entirely on

417
00:45:23.180 --> 00:45:38.180
He talks about the poor, infatuated Americans. He talks about the British mauling the poor, infatuated Americans.

418
00:45:38.180 --> 00:45:43.180
They are infatuated in the same way the Wilkes and Liberty people are infatuated.

419
00:45:43.180 --> 00:45:48.180
They're caught up in a philosophic superstition, which is getting out of hand.

420
00:45:48.180 --> 00:45:54.180
and they're unable to see their real interests and the real moral dimensions.

421
00:45:54.180 --> 00:46:00.180
So, Hume thinks that the source of morality is not in pure reflection, it's in sentiment.

422
00:46:00.180 --> 00:46:07.180
And one of the things that can corrupt morality is a false kind of reflection or theorizing

423
00:46:07.180 --> 00:46:12.180
that makes it impossible for you to see or very difficult to see moral reality.

424
00:46:12.180 --> 00:46:15.180
And he's trying to pierce through that.

425
00:46:15.180 --> 00:46:21.180
He's declaring a plague on both the American ideology and the Wilkes and Liberty ideology.

426
00:46:21.180 --> 00:46:28.180
It's all, of course, very complicated. There are nuances and subtleties that we can't go into.

427
00:46:28.180 --> 00:46:35.180
The Declaration says we hold these truths to be self-evident. It doesn't say they are.

428
00:46:35.180 --> 00:46:43.180
And it is a provisional statement. And I don't think that Jefferson can be accused of being simple-minded.

429
00:46:43.180 --> 00:46:52.180
and Jefferson distinguishes himself from Payne and Henry and so on, on those grounds.

430
00:46:52.180 --> 00:46:55.180
Also, Hume operates...

431
00:46:55.180 --> 00:46:56.180
That's a good point.

432
00:46:56.180 --> 00:47:04.180
On so many different fronts, Hume kind of collapses political science with political theory.

433
00:47:04.180 --> 00:47:11.180
He gives analyses that amount to predictions based on certain understandings of human proclivities

434
00:48:11.180 --> 00:48:25.180
and demolishing them. So, it's very difficult to figure out Hume because he just moves on so many different directions, invokes so many different weaponries and controversies.

435
00:48:25.180 --> 00:48:46.180
When you say that human believe in sentimentality versus the rationality, are you talking about prescriptive rights and experience rather than abstract reasoning being the basis?

436
00:48:46.180 --> 00:48:54.180
Well, both of these questions touch on the same issue and, oh goodness, it takes so long to go into these.

437
00:48:54.180 --> 00:48:59.180
I'm trying to finish up a book I call Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium,

438
00:48:59.180 --> 00:49:02.180
in which I hope I will answer your question.

439
00:49:02.180 --> 00:49:07.180
But anyway, the short answer is this.

440
00:49:07.180 --> 00:49:12.180
Let us take something, we all believe in reason, right, and everybody wants to be rational.

441
00:49:12.180 --> 00:49:22.180
And the unexamined life isn't worth living, Socrates said, and we all accept that, he'll accept that. So a reason is something everybody accepts.

442
00:49:22.180 --> 00:49:33.180
But suppose it turns out that there is a corruption in reason itself, just as the body, we all want to be healthy, but the body can generate corruptions.

443
00:49:33.180 --> 00:49:43.180
The immune system can go berserk and make you ill by just doing its thing in an inappropriate way.

444
00:49:43.180 --> 00:49:46.180
The same can happen with reason.

445
00:49:46.180 --> 00:49:48.180
I think Hume was one of the first to appreciate this.

446
00:49:48.180 --> 00:49:52.180
He is not rejecting reason. He does not criticize reason.

447
00:49:52.180 --> 00:49:56.180
But he criticizes a corrupt reason, a corrupt rationality.

448
00:49:56.180 --> 00:49:59.180
You can call it rationalism or whatever you want to call it.

449
00:49:59.180 --> 00:50:02.180
He calls it false philosophy as opposed to true philosophy.

450
00:50:02.180 --> 00:50:10.180
Now, let's suppose there's a true way to criticize and a corrupt way to criticize, and suppose it's very difficult to tell the difference.

451
00:50:10.180 --> 00:50:21.180
Suppose it's very difficult to tell the difference. And it would, of course, be difficult to tell the difference, because both are being done with argument, both are being done from the same source.

452
00:50:21.180 --> 00:50:51.180
How you know the difference is what I'm working on in this book, and this is part of Hume's skepticism, but I won't go into that because the word skepticism will set off lights immediately, but suffice it to say that Hume, the short answer or the long answer to your question, is that he makes this distinction, we can argue about whether he can make it adequately and so on, but he makes the distinction between a true kind of theorizing and a corrupt kind of theorizing.

453
00:50:51.180 --> 00:51:05.180
Now, if you talk about ideals, then if the ideals are generated by this corrupt sort of theorizing, they will be corrupt ideals, they will be seductive, they will be corruptive.

454
00:51:05.180 --> 00:51:13.180
If the ideals are generated by this true kind of critical thinking, they will be benevolent and enhancing.

455
00:51:13.180 --> 00:51:20.180
And his idea of a perfect commonwealth is an ideal of a perfect commonwealth.

456
00:51:20.180 --> 00:51:26.740
and Hume argues that it is the best commonwealth, it is the best form of human political order,

457
00:51:26.740 --> 00:51:33.740
the best, not second best, the best, and he gives an argument. But he, if his thought

458
00:51:33.740 --> 00:51:40.740
is well grounded, this ideal is defensible, this ideal is the result of this true kind

459
00:51:41.220 --> 00:51:43.900
of theorizing as opposed to the corrupt kind.

460
00:51:43.900 --> 00:51:49.900
It's a debate about all philosophers' debate just exactly that way.

461
00:51:49.900 --> 00:51:59.900
I mean, Locke would have probably argued if he had been taken to task by Hume that he tried, you know, the reasonableness of Christianity,

462
00:51:59.900 --> 00:52:05.900
he tried to do the meta-ethical and the meta-political stuff just as much as Hume does.

463
00:52:05.900 --> 00:52:12.900
We all try to second-guess our adversaries and undermine their criticism and move ahead of them and so on.

464
00:52:12.900 --> 00:52:19.900
The Theory of Money and Credit

465
00:52:42.900 --> 00:52:46.580
And that's why I don't trust them as much as I trust some others who seem to just lay

466
00:52:46.580 --> 00:52:52.340
out the arguments and leave the moralizing and the bashing you over the head to later,

467
00:52:52.340 --> 00:52:57.140
unless they're writing a novel, you know, or they're doing a political speech or so.

468
00:52:57.140 --> 00:53:01.620
Well, he did sell 168 printings of his book.

469
00:53:01.620 --> 00:53:05.660
Well, people, I don't know where you're getting this from.

470
00:53:05.660 --> 00:53:09.460
I mean, I look at the original contract and I don't see anybody being bashed over the

471
00:53:09.460 --> 00:53:10.900
head any more than anybody else.

472
00:53:10.900 --> 00:53:13.900
And ultimately, he gives arguments and...

473
00:53:13.900 --> 00:53:21.900
But even the quotes that you read, there's a lot of this, you know, kind of nastiness about...

474
00:53:21.900 --> 00:53:25.900
Oh, he's spirited. He's a spirited man.

475
00:53:25.900 --> 00:53:31.900
Did Jefferson lay out his criticisms in any detail?

476
00:53:31.900 --> 00:53:32.900
Of whom?

477
00:53:32.900 --> 00:53:34.900
Of Hume's books and...

478
00:53:34.900 --> 00:53:42.900
Yeah, he liked the history in the late 50s and 60s. He liked it and recommended it in his letters.

479
00:53:42.900 --> 00:53:49.900
But after the revolution, he began to, I'm not sure why, but he began to think that

480
00:53:49.900 --> 00:53:56.900
Hume's history of the British Constitution was kind of like T-Boys, it's very fetching and everything,

481
00:53:56.900 --> 00:54:03.900
but there's a lot of sleight of hand in it and so on, and that Americans are going to be corrupted by it.

482
00:54:03.900 --> 00:54:15.900
I mean, they're going to not be as attached to the English Puritans, for example, and the English old Whigs and all, and anyone having read Hume's history, it'll subvert their faith in that.

483
00:54:15.900 --> 00:54:23.900
So he wanted to suppress. But there were two reasons. One was, the main reason was that Hume rejected the theory of ancient constitutionalism.

484
00:54:23.900 --> 00:54:29.900
And then the other one was the original contract.

485
00:54:29.900 --> 00:54:37.900
It wasn't because he was favorable to the monarchy.

486
00:54:37.900 --> 00:54:46.900
Well, yes. I mean, Hume does have a, he sheds a generous tear for the fate of Charles I.

487
00:54:46.900 --> 00:54:58.900
He is critical of the Puritans. He recognizes some of the good they achieved, but he thinks they're fanatics.

488
00:54:58.900 --> 00:55:02.260
and Jefferson didn't like that either.

489
00:55:02.260 --> 00:55:05.060
But it didn't bother him, you see, before the revolution.

490
00:55:05.060 --> 00:55:11.100
It only bothered him afterwards.

491
00:55:11.100 --> 00:55:14.980
So he actually, see Baxter's history was,

492
00:55:14.980 --> 00:55:19.100
Hume's history was so popular, Baxter took Hume's history

493
00:55:19.100 --> 00:55:23.460
and he took one of these little yellow plastic markers

494
00:55:23.460 --> 00:55:27.540
and he went through and he marked out all the offending

495
00:55:27.540 --> 00:55:43.540
Passages, when Hume was talking about the Stuart's and Cromwell and Charles I, he marked out all the offending passages and then he went back and rewrote them in the Republican style and then published it.

496
00:55:43.540 --> 00:55:51.540
And that's what Jefferson wanted to use. He wanted to use the censored version of Hume. It's Hume's history, Republicanized, that's what Jefferson called it.

497
00:55:51.540 --> 00:56:00.540
The style is good, Hume's got it all laid out, it's just that his keyboard would find these terrible places.

498
00:56:00.540 --> 00:56:01.540
But I wouldn't censor it.

499
00:56:01.540 --> 00:56:08.540
No, I know you wouldn't. You have too much greatness of mind and magnanimity to do that.

500
00:56:08.540 --> 00:56:16.540
By now, you see, you have to ponder Mr. Jefferson wanting to censor it.

501
00:56:16.540 --> 00:56:24.540
Well, did Hume ever argue against a generalized right to secession?

502
00:56:24.540 --> 00:56:26.540
Argue against it?

503
00:56:26.540 --> 00:56:28.540
Against it, a right.

504
00:56:28.540 --> 00:56:36.540
Well, the way Hume, no, against no, he didn't argue for or against a general right to secession.

505
00:56:36.540 --> 00:56:39.540
I'm not sure I understand what's behind the question.

506
00:56:39.540 --> 00:56:48.540
I was thinking about, he seems to think that secession is a good idea if you're succeeding from a Republican Empire,

507
00:56:48.540 --> 00:56:54.540
but if you're living under a monarchical system that's just and free.

508
00:56:54.540 --> 00:56:59.540
Hume doesn't, you won't find much talk about rights in Hume, right?

509
00:56:59.540 --> 00:57:04.540
I mean, there is talk about rights and privileges and liberties,

510
00:57:04.540 --> 00:57:09.540
He's a moral sentiment theorist, and the base of this theory is virtue.

511
00:57:09.540 --> 00:57:12.540
The grounding of ethics is virtue.

512
00:57:12.540 --> 00:57:16.540
And there are two main virtues, the source of all virtues.

513
00:57:16.540 --> 00:57:22.540
Greatness of mind, which is honor, pride, self-worth, and extensive benevolence.

514
00:57:22.540 --> 00:57:26.540
And then the artificial virtues are tied into that.

515
00:57:26.540 --> 00:57:28.540
But anyway, these are the natural virtues.

516
00:57:28.540 --> 00:57:33.540
And so duty is the primary moral category for human.

517
00:57:33.540 --> 00:57:36.540
The Virtues of Excellence, the Duty of Excellence.

518
00:57:36.540 --> 00:57:39.540
Rights come after that.

519
00:57:39.540 --> 00:57:44.540
Rights are things you're entitled to because you've done your duties or your virtues.

520
00:57:44.540 --> 00:57:48.540
So that's basically how he thinks of rights.

521
00:57:48.540 --> 00:57:50.540
Occasionally there are strong statements.

522
00:57:50.540 --> 00:57:52.540
He believes in property rights.

523
00:57:52.540 --> 00:57:57.540
He believes in rule of law.

524
00:57:57.540 --> 00:58:02.540
These are privileges and ways of life that have come about in Europe.

525
00:58:02.540 --> 00:58:06.540
in Europe. And if you read his History of England, you'll see him giving an account of how these

526
00:58:06.540 --> 00:58:12.540
evolve, how these liberties evolve, right? And the way he thinks about them is that they've grown up,

527
00:58:12.540 --> 00:58:18.540
they've evolved, and we don't know what they mean, right? In other words, we know they're good.

528
00:58:18.540 --> 00:58:24.540
We've lived through them and found them to be good. They've been proved by thoughtful people.

529
00:58:24.540 --> 00:58:30.540
But we don't know the consequences of them, right? So we have to, we have to balance

530
00:58:30.540 --> 00:58:34.540
liberty and duty, constantly, or what he calls liberty and authority.

531
00:58:34.540 --> 00:58:37.540
You have to constantly balance liberty and authority.

532
00:58:37.540 --> 00:58:41.540
And it requires phronesis, it requires Aristotelian good judgment.

533
00:58:41.540 --> 00:58:45.540
So he's not likely to talk, he doesn't talk about any general right

534
00:58:45.540 --> 00:58:49.540
to do this or any general right to do that.

535
00:58:49.540 --> 00:58:51.540
It's more of a prudential thing.

536
00:58:51.540 --> 00:58:55.540
And so what he saw with the Americans was that,

537
00:58:55.540 --> 00:59:00.540
Look, these people have been governing themselves for about a hundred years.

538
00:59:00.540 --> 00:59:06.540
In one of his notes, when he was writing the treatise, when he was in his 20s, late 20s, he penned this note.

539
00:59:06.540 --> 00:59:18.540
The colonies of North America, the charters, the colonies of North America are almost virtually independent.

540
00:59:18.540 --> 00:59:21.540
He said that in his late 20s.

541
00:59:21.540 --> 00:59:24.540
He already knew about the cot charters and all the rest of it.

542
00:59:24.540 --> 00:59:30.540
These people began to assert their independence, right, and their rights.

543
00:59:30.540 --> 00:59:38.540
And Hume just accepted this as a kind of Hayekian spontaneous order that developed, that had to be recognized.

544
00:59:38.540 --> 00:59:46.540
He put it to one of his nobleman friends, who wanted strong measures against the Americans, and I forgot the man's name.

545
00:59:46.540 --> 01:00:00.540
My Lord, your son here is with us, and when he was a boy and did wrong, I'm sure you gave him a whipping, and I'm sure it did him a lot of good, but you wouldn't do it now.

546
01:00:00.540 --> 01:00:05.540
And he said, the colonies are no longer in their known age.

547
01:00:05.540 --> 01:00:10.540
But then he added, but Mr. Franklin wishes to emancipate them too soon.

548
01:00:10.540 --> 01:00:28.540
And he was, he thought Franklin tended to get a little thematical sometimes, and you know the thing about the letters that Franklin had apparently slipped to people, anyway that's a long story.

549
01:00:28.540 --> 01:00:39.540
Now he thought they had just grown up and developed, they had the right of self-government, but I guess you could generalize from that that when a people grows up and they have the right of self-government,

550
01:00:39.540 --> 01:00:52.540
When have they grown up? It's hard to say. You make a judgment. People of good character will recognize this. People who have extensive benevolence will recognize it.

551
01:00:52.540 --> 01:01:05.540
I know we're out of time, but what books would you recommend, hopefully written by you, biography of him or analysis of him that brings in the things that you talked about?

552
01:01:05.540 --> 01:01:14.540
Well, the book I wrote, Hume's Philosophy of Common Life, talks about some of this, and I've written some essays.

553
01:01:14.540 --> 01:01:25.540
There's nothing much on this question of Hume's attitude toward America.

554
01:01:25.540 --> 01:01:47.540
Sorry? I've written one other essay, published one other essay on this. It's in this new book I'm doing. Well, it's called Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium and it's on the corrupt interlife, the distinction between true and false philosophy.

555
01:01:47.540 --> 01:01:49.540
Sounds like finals time around here.

556
01:01:49.540 --> 01:01:51.540
That's right.

557
01:01:51.540 --> 01:01:53.540
Well, we have to bring today's session to a close.

558
01:01:53.540 --> 01:01:55.540
Thank you very much.