David Hume's First Principles of Government: Is Force really on the side of the Governed?
The power of opinion, from Antiquity to the Present Day
The greatest of philosophic constitutions - the American one of 1787 - is renowned for its dependency on principles first espoused by French and English thinkers. The Scots of the same period, most notably Adam Smith and David Hume, are seen to play an important, but less fundamental role in the legal-philosophic construction of the New World.
Whilst it is Charles Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755), and John Locke (1632 - 1704) who are the most popularly-remembered philosophical figures behind the American constitution, the two Scotsmen who were both contemporary, and successor to, their work, are deserving of examination also.
David Hume, in particular, espouses a philosophy of popular power which finds a general resonance in the American disposition toward a high-agency general public. Hume’s preference for both material and psychological force held against the Government was most conspicuously recognised by America’s founders in the drafting of the 2nd amendment to the constitution, enshrining the right of ordinary citizens to bear arms.
In the fourth chapter of his volume, Essays - Moral, Political and Literary, Hume makes the claim that;
“as FORCE is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion.”
This at first seems to be a reckoning incongruent with the state of affairs that most governed people, whatever the form of their government, actually feel as subordinate members of any given polity. This incongruence of feeling with Hume’s stated position would seem to hold true whether a government be despotic or democratic, though in the former the feeling is general and visceral, and in the latter it is potential and contingent on falling afoul of particular circumstance. The incongruence also seems to hold true whether or not a given nation has the mechanism and social disposition toward activating their latent force through a ‘people’s militia’, as is faintly apprehended in modern-day Switzerland, and has always been rigorously championed in the United States by virtue of the second amendment to the Constitution. By example, I might comfortably say that Americans (however begrudgingly) know President Biden to be correct in stating, “If you wanted or if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15’s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”
What I illustrate here is that, regardless of whatever real power the governed may have on their side, even in the freest societies on Earth, modern man’s common sense presumption is that it is the governors who maintain real material force against the governed. Though not strictly analogous, this presumption is well characterized by Max Weber’s assertion that the state “claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”
I must qualify this claim of incongruence by observing that Hume, contra Weber, may not see a strict equivalence between the terms ‘governor’ and ‘state’. As these two terms denote the personal and the institutional, so there may need to be a necessary difference in the categories of argument they address. However, this does not change the effective way in which the public (the ‘governed’) draws an equivalence between the governors and the state itself. Unless he is returned to a kind of Rousseauian state of nature, men in any modern Western nation today surely looks up to perceive overwhelming power held above themselves. I don’t think that this state of affairs changes when man looks around and sees an unlimited supply of potential fellows in arms beside him, because the causes and interests of one alone will never be identical to the causes and interests of all in sum. In other words, if modern man decides that he needs to take on a government that has wronged him, then how on earth would he imagine he’d do it?
From this departure point, I will undertake a tripartite examination of Hume’s claimed ‘First Principles of Government.’ First, I will seek the truth of Hume’s claim that the governed (in a general sense) do, or at least can potentially hold true superiority of force against their governors. That established, I will secondly evaluate Hume’s framing of opinion as the lynchpin upon which governmental authority pivots. I will thirdly move to explicate what I think are the causes of human perceptions that Hume argues give opinion itself its robust constitution - a constitution strong enough to maintain its hold as the nexus of governmental power. These causes, as stated by Hume, subdivide into Interest and Right. In the case of right, Hume further bifurcates the category into right to power and right to property. As Hume said that self-interest, fear and affection color the antecedent components of interest and right, I will dedicate substantial space to exploring the nature of these sub-categories.
Do the governed hold force: Who had the power, and who has the power now?
In the first object, when I address Hume in his own time, the claim that the governed have hold of a greater force than the governors seems to have the potential to be true once we accept its premise as a raw estimate of material strength from ancient times through to the 18th Century. If we further reduce the governing man (or men) to himself alone, as Hume did, then the debate is over before it is had. Antiquity is instructive:
In the Roman republic, had the entire 900 senators of Caesar’s reign been but an aggregated and unrestrained extension of their ruler’s arm, then still they would still be outmatched 3,000:1 by the fighting age men residing within the city walls. This simple balance of manpower was the equation Hume proposed when he said “as a single man, [the ruler’s] bodily force can reach but a small way, and all the farther power he possesses must be founded either on our own opinion, or on the presumed opinion of others.”
But Hume’s basic equation appears an insufficient proposal to the man of good reason. Does common sense not tell us we must account for the effective, not the mere fundamental estimation of force spread amongst different classes of men? As ancient Rome is to modern Britain, so the following may elucidate the matter: Even if one accounts for the superior musketry of King George III’s 80,000 marines in 1776 - the year of Hume’s death - one must observe that said Marines could not yet reload with dexterity enough to cut through any surging unarmed mass of 6 million Britons - let alone deal with revolutionary Americans, and agitating Irish convicts. We see by this account, that even going beyond Hume’s philosophical restrictions by accounting for weaponry as a natural and exponential extension of man’s violent capacities, his argument remains sound.
And what if, for relevance’s sake, we do read Hume with a view to our present circumstances? Though I think the view of his system becomes somewhat opaque, it is certainly not disproved. The intervening years between Hume’s death and the present day have destroyed the intimacy and proportionality of man to his weaponry. As contemporary America is to the two preceding world empires, so its circumstances may address Hume’s equation as well.
American Presidential power in the nuclear age has grossly enlarged the force magnifying power of the governor. But both the US Constitution itself, and latterly-added command chain obstacles (both material and psychological) have also grossly handicapped the executive power of the governor - even in the case of the most powerful governor in the most powerful government of the most powerful nation - that being the President of the United States. The supreme governor of modern America has now-unlimited kingly force, but he does not have the immediacy of old-world kingly dispatch. The American President as governor holds superior individual force at his personal disposal, but paradoxically, the use of that force against those he actually governs, is institutionally frustrated.
I say then, that on this first point of examination, Hume is emphatically vindicated.
How powerful is Opinion, really?
I turn now to Hume’s framing of opinion as the nexus of governmental power. Here, I return to where we left Caesar, and consider briefly first the qualification that Hume places on the continuation of the governing power, in cases where the mass of opinion is not in favor of the governor. As Hume says:
“The soldan of Egypt, or the emperor of Rome, might drive his harmless subjects, like brute beasts, against their sentiments and inclinations: But he must, at least, have led his mamalukes, or praetorian bands, like men, by their opinion.”
On face value, Hume is saying that should an oppressed population become possessed of the opinion that they should move against a ruler, then that ruler could prevent that opinion from begetting action by inculcating a contrary (or at least favorable to the ruler’s circumstance) opinion amongst those who might surround and protect him. Let us hold up Caesar here: the simple fact he employs a guard seems to confirm Hume’s speculation as fact. A Praetorian guard existing at all is a straightforward endorsement of the argument that material strength allied to opinion, can indeed retain power. This develops Hume’s account of opinion’s necessity, and qualifies his earlier statement that “the governors have nothing to support them but opinion,” which read alone, might seem to discount weaponry and social power too flippantly.
In considering opinion, we could posit that Caesar’s first task is to inculcate in his Senators and Guardsmen an opinion constituted of the knowledge of a better future within the court of his governorship than they would otherwise chance amongst the anonymous swill of the general public. As far as concerns the opinion of that general public, it would also be Caesar’s task to inculcate that same promise of a better future without the court of the governor. This would aid his rise, and give ballast to his natural authority as leader. However, as history has shown us that Caesar will one day seek a dictatorship and strive to live as governor despite the opinion of the general public, it is in fact more important for him to ultimately see to that posited first task, as by holding firm in the positive opinion of his guard, he as a single man may defy through projected force the negative opinion of his numerical superiors.
Caesar is a fine exemplar of Hume’s maxim because as the circumstances of his rise and maintenance of power prove the concreteness of Hume’s account of opinion, so too do the circumstances of his fall sustain this account: Caesar’s death at the hands of traitors from within his inner circle in 45 BC proves that as a dictator, he failed in his primary task of securing the opinion of those at his court. Paradoxically, though for a dictator the opinion held of Caesar amongst the general public was comparatively good, once opinion amongst his allies had swung against the continuation of his rule, it was fated to come to an end.
In sequence, we can then say that:
Caesar’s rise to leadership proves Hume’s fundamental account of opinion
Caesar’s (brief) continuing rule once that rule became dictatorial proves the necessity of the opinion of the ‘guards’ class holding at bay the opinion of the masses
Caesar’s death at the hands of members of his own inner circle, upon the loss of their beneficial opinion, is further consistent with the Humean account of opinion’s essentiality to ongoing governing power.
What Constitutes Opinion?
If we are to ask why a particular opinion, in Hume’s account, does in fact hold this awesome power of governmental birth and death, then we must next examine what constitutes opinion for Hume. Hume’s first investigation into the constitution of opinion is into interest, which he defines as the “general advantage which is reaped from government”. This phrase does seem to lend more weight to the Weberian interpretation raised earlier. If as stated, the perception of the opinion holder is of the advantage reaped from government in a general sense, and it is the governor himself who stands to win advantage from that perception, then it would seem that for Hume, the state does in fact equal the man.
This taken, the perception of a general advantage in any kind of government is a straightforward concept. There is little here to be added to Hume’s explication other than to observe that in a Democracy men might vote for that which they believe to be to their best advantage, and in a Tyranny will behave in a manner they believe best minimizes their exposure to the cruel caprices of the Tyrant. This observation however does point us to the inseparability of the particular interest from the general interest. Men do not vote with a hivemind, so they can not think to the general advantage without assessing their own particular advantage. If there is to be a general sense of anything, it must be drawn as an aggregate of particulars within each man’s mind. Therefore I say that Hume has underplayed the extent to which the particular interest/advantage of the individual man flows into the general interest/advantage men understand to flow from the institution of governments.
By way of three general categories of government - Democracy, Tyranny, and Monarchy - I will now construct a theater in which we view and assess Hume’s further contingent subcategories in the constitution of opinion: self-interest, fear, and affection, respectively. At this point, I will delay the necessary discussion of Right, until after the discussion of these three secondary principles of government. The reason for this is that as I see it difficult to disentangle the category of self interest from interest more fundamentally, I believe it would be fruitful to follow the discussion of the general interest with that of the particular interest, as I have described it above. To be clear, in this case, the general interest is termed ‘interest’, as described above, and the particular interest is forthwith termed, ‘self-interest,’ as per Hume’s description.
Democracy gives us perhaps the best examples of what Hume calls ‘self-interest.’ I say this because if one is to actually behave with a view to their own self-interest, then I think that he must be free enough to self-define what that interest is. A Democracy gives man the prerogative to hold opinions pertaining to his own improvement, and to hold the realistic hope that those opinions, acted upon, will find reward. For Hume, this prerogative manifests itself in what he says is “the expectation of particular rewards, distinct from the general protection which we receive from the government.” The man in a free political society is the man best disposed to conceive of the kind of particular rewards that Hume’s scheme offers - and actively vote for them. The terminology of ‘particular rewards’, seems to encourage the thought of positively reaching for a discernible improvement in the individual’s circumstances.
Conversely, I think that in a Tyranny, opinion might in the first place be constituted more literally by fear. In a Tyranny, man cannot positively strive for something he knows to be for his own good. He can not, in fact, fully define what his own good is, because he does not have the agency to identify it. His time is consumed by surviving, and his best action should look toward the better toleration of his soul’s captivity. But this is not necessarily the account of fear Hume lands on. That account is a perplexing one: On the one hand Hume seems to highlight fear’s futility. But then again, there is a tacit acknowledgement that its alchemy with opinion gives it absolute hold over the unjustly ruled minds of a despotism:
“No man would have any reason to fear the fury of a tyrant, if he had no authority over any but from fear; since, as a single man, his bodily force can reach but a small way, and all the farther power he possesses must be founded either on our own opinion, or on the presumed opinion of others.”
It needs to be said here that I think any particular admixture of self-interest and fear could in theory be found in the opinions that sustain any particular regime. Whilst I think it more likely these particular traits would occur as I have outlined, there is no reason self-interest couldn’t predominate at times in a Tyranny, or that fear would not win the day in a Democracy. However, to broach discussion of this topic would be to see it devolve into semantics too quickly to be useful, and is not the object of this paper.
The final secondary principle of government offered by Hume is affection. This I find to be the weakest of his arguments. I think so for two reasons. Firstly, I am skeptical that affection is as fundamental a passion as fear, or as motivating a concern as self-interest. Secondly, I feel that affection is too tightly bound up in the category of right to be judged independently of that discussion (right being for Hume, its own more foundational part of opinion). I think it logical to say that where man feels an attachment to right, his affection will surely follow. So, I would say that affection is, with reference to Hume’s account, more a consequence of opinion, less a cause or influence of opinion. I will deal with right more fulsomely in subsequent passages.
To the first concern, self-interest and fear almost always conspire to render obsolete any dependence man has on affection for or against a particular cause. Whilst affections may color the reception of an opinion, it is hard to see how they could drive or substantially alter it. I need not subscribe fulsomely to the expositions of a Thucydides or a Hobbes, to see how ‘affection’ is at best a loose placeholder for fear and self-interest. This is not to say that there is no place for affection in the legitimisation of the opinion of men’s governors. On the contrary, it was affection that perhaps bestrode the breasts of reticent New York loyalists in the reign of George III, feeding opinion against the American revolution at a time when both fear and self-interest should have persuaded wise men otherwise. But again I must notice that the outcome of that war points us to the vigor of the latter winning out against the febrility of the former.
Insofar as affection does count for something of its own accord detached in fact, from right, it would seem most natural that this something belongs to the type of constitutional monarchy Hume himself lived under in 18th Century Scotland. In service of this point, Hume says that it is the ancient nature of regimes that gives them a deep wellspring of this opinion-generating affection. He seems to be painting the archetype of a monarch ruling as the latest of a long-lineaged regime, when he says that “affection to wisdom and virtue in a sovereign extends very far…he must antecedently be supposed invested with a public character…” Public character does not, even for a modern like Hume, appear to be something that can be invented overnight. Something of the hereditary entitlement, and perhaps even the divine right of Kings which springs from an ancient godly power, I think, would seem to be tied up in this account of the man most suited to rule.
Here then I will move directly to the matter of right, as on this subject there is a copacetic argument between causes Hume attributes under the heading of affection, and causes Hume shortly earlier in his essay had attributed to right. Before calling attention to affection separately, Hume brings forth arguments which he observes in the affections of people but which he argues are generated from this sense of right. Hume argues that the right to Power is bred by man’s observed sense of antiquity in his prevailing government. When Hume further develops this theory of right by examining the acts of men in faction, he would seem to be lending stronger credence yet to this subsumption of affection into right. His language is instructive. He speaks of men having a ‘social disposition’, and that:
“[upon forming] a point of right or principle, there is no occasion, where men discover a greater obstinacy, and a more determined sense of justice and equity”
Doesn’t this seem to be a case where Hume directly places affection as consequent to right? What else is a ‘determined sense of justice and equity’, if not an affection? I note that Hume does not contradict himself by saying this, as he is clear in his placing affection as a secondary principle. But still, I think more clarity could be given to his system by distinctly recognising affection as commonly flowing from right, right being a substantially more powerful idea.
Hume seems at first to ignore the relevance of the right to property (the second of his bifurcated categories of right). He acknowledges its influence on the politics of the day but then quickly drops the argument, notwithstanding a criticism of James Harrington’s claim that the balance of governmental power rests on the balance of property. However, he returns to the subject at the end of his essay to refute this argument more strongly, making the claim that, “A Government may endure for several ages, though the balance of power, and the balance of property do not coincide.”
What I think Hume reduces his argument to, is that wealth through property does not necessarily lead to the power of government through opinion. But even Hume admits that such a circumstance - where the greatest of landholders could be the weakest of politicians - would be contingent on them being shut out of power under their country’s constitution in the first place. I can think of perhaps one circumstance (though I am sure more would persist) that would prove this maxim.
Property divorced from Power: 19th Century Australia
In early 19th Century Australia, newly emancipated convicts were granted 30 acres of land or more per man, upon the expiration of their sentences. Through enterprise or accident, many later came to hold as much or more land than many British officers and free setters. But until 1842, these emancipated convicts were denied both suffrage and governing privilege under the existing British constitution which governed the then-colony of New South Wales on the Australian continent: they could not vote for their interests, and nor could they turn their considerable land wealth into any political power whatsoever.
It is not the purpose of this paper to examine the ratios by which man’s property wealth is commonly recognised as political power subsequent to constitutional access to the levers of government. Suffice to say though, I think Hume is correct in substance when he says that, contingent upon constitutional right, men will turn property into power. I disagree with him, however, in his characterisation of this being, in all cases, “easy for them to gradually stretch their authority, and bring the balance of power to coincide with that of property.” Perhaps we may have different definitions of the word ‘gradually’ but I would posit to Mr Hume that even with the greatest diligence and application, it commonly takes men with no political lineage many generations to carve the timber of their plantations into the form of government benches.
The Humean Political Economy - Consequences and Opportunities
Having completed this inquiry, I think that Hume’s idea that the governed hold real force against and over the governor still holds true. The notion that opinion itself can contain the seed of governmental power is largely vindicated, and we can confirm Hume’s account of opinion’s constitution. Hence, we can apprehend the nature of what constitutes the true power of governmental authority in Humean political economy. In consequence of this model then, what can I say are the opportunities and dangers that Hume’s account of opinion present?
I would say that the adoption of Hume’s critique of opinion, On the first principles of Government, might encourage men to locate the generative power of human rulers in the hearts and minds of their fellow men. This seems, to me, to give Hume the stamp of enlightenment, and positions him strongly as an intellectual antecedent to the famous document authored by the Americans in the year of his death, which said conspicuously that:
“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
I think also, that because Hume’s account would lay incumbency upon the governor to maintain his power via the ongoing consent derived from opinion, that Hume’s scheme behooves governors to use the constant application of good virtue and reason in order to carry opinion once their power is first attained. Though it may not have been the central aim, it could be a happy consequence in the adoption of Humean thought, that the general competency of governors might rise, as those in power pay heed to the particular (or personal) interest. In so doing, they may reform old assumptions in pursuit of a benevolent power based on agreeability of opinion, in lieu of a cruel one derived from the brute force thought inevitable by Hobbes, and painted as virtuous by the Athenians in Thucydides account of the siege at Melos.
But what of my own claim, made in the opening of this essay, that, contrary to Hume’s design, our own impression of the common social state is that man exists in a state fearing the awesome force of the government held against him? Can one read Hume, and simply forget the naturally-occuring feeling of looking up to see power, and sideways to see fellow men similarly hapless, and similarly outgunned?
I don’t think one can ever really escape at least some of the Hobbesian fear that exists in any state ostensibly armed for the defense of its citizens and the attack of its foreign enemies. As long as force is required, governments shall dispatch it, and the risk of the ruler's virtue turning to vice is one we shall all have to bear. However, the virtue of Hume’s scheme surely relies on the mass of public opinion congealing together, overwhelming its obstacles, and arming itself usefully, in terms both material and intellectual, to combat despotism when it does inevitably arise. This is an impossible task for opinion alone to undertake, but it’s countenance makes for a polity more vigilant against tyranny, and strikes into the heart of the would-be ruler a more viscerally-felt opinion of his own: that the governed many may just find the agency amongst themselves to turn opinion into action. This at least would be one positive reckoning with the influence of fear in the constitution of opinion!
Notwithstanding the vicissitudes of lone would-be tyrants, it is important to realize that the biggest danger in Hume’s system is lying in plain sight: In an earlier passage within this essay, in the discussion surrounding Caesar’s guard, I raised the spectre of material strength allied to opinion, as a circumstance that can indeed perpetuate the most severe despotic power over the governed. This is the destructive power of opinion. It is a power based in the particular interest which finds its way into the opinions of those who have most to gain by protecting the governor, or most to lose by falling foul of his favor. Here then, lies the key to Humean equilibrium - to remain vigilant for the divergent turn of opinion between the governed, and those who surround the governor.
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Ben Crocker is Academic Programs Manager at the University of Austin (UATX), and Research Fellow at Common Sense Society, in Washington, DC.