Hume : with helps to the study of Berkeley : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley.

Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hume : with helps to the study of Berkeley : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    an absolute monarch ; and we have already had an instance of this kind, sufficient to convince us, that such a pei-son will never resign his power, or establish any free government. Matters, therefore, must be trusted to their natural progress and operation ; and the House of Commons, according to its present constitution, must be the only legislature in such a popular government. The inconveniences attending such a situation of affairs present themselves by thousands. If the House of Commons, in such a case, ever dissolve itself, which is not to be expected, we may look for a civil war every election. If it continue itself, we shall suffer all the tyranny of a fection subdivided into new factions. And, as such a violent government cannot long subsist, we shall at last, after many convulsions and civil wars, find repose in absolute monarchy, which it would have been happier for us to have established peaceably from the beginning. Absolute monarchy, therefore, is the easiest death, the true ExUhanasia of the British constitution. “ Thus if we have more reason to be jealous of monarchy, because the danger is more imminent from that quarter; we have also reason to be more jealous of popular government, be- cause that danger is more terrible. This may teach us a lesson of moderation in aU our political controversies.”—(III. 55). One may admire, the sagacity of these specula- tions, and the force and clearness with which they are expressed, without altogether agi’eeing with them. That an analogy between the social and bodily organism exists, n,nd is, in many respects, clear and full of instructive suggestion, is undeni- able. Yet a state answers, not to an individual, but to a generic type; and there is no reason, in the nature of things, why any generic type should die out. The type of the pearly Ncmtilus, highly organised as it is, has persisted with but little