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Let us cherish and improve our ancient government as much as possible, without encouraging a passion for such dangerous novelties. A permanent online resource for Hume scholars and students, including reliable texts of almost everything written by David Hume, and links to secondary material on the web.
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If Edmund Burke pondered over one of the key questions of political theory, “who guards us from the guardians?”, David Hume was pondering an equally difficult problem: “why is it so easy for the few in power to govern the many?”
A permanent online resource for Hume scholars and students, including reliable texts of almost everything written by David Hume, and links to secondary material on the web.
Hume sees all governments as the result of a struggle between authority and liberty, with the best of them achieving a balance between the two by implementing systems of “general laws.” Hume’s cautious approach to social change may fairly be called conservative.
David Hume has two important insights into the origin of government; that it is often born out of warfare, and that once established there is a “perpetual struggle” within it between Liberty and Power (1777):
Jun 5, 2012 · The mind of man is subject to certain unaccountable terrors and apprehensions, proceeding either from the unhappy situation of private or public affairs, from ill health, from a gloomy and melancholy disposition, or from the concurrence of all these circumstances.
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When this opinion prevails among the generality of a state, or among those who have the force in their hands, it gives great security to any government. Right is of two kinds, right to power and right to property.
