Hume's Political Discourses

THE SCOTT LIBRARY.
HUME’S POLITICAL DISCOURSES.
⁂ FOR FULL LIST OF THE VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES, SEE CATALOGUE AT END OF BOOK.
Hume’s Po­lit­i­cal Dis­cours­es. With an In­tro­duc­tion by Wil­liam Bell Rob­ert­son, Auth­or of “Foun­da­tions of Pol­i­ti­cal Econ­o­my,” “Slav­ery of La­bour,” Etc.
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It is chiefly as a political economist that Hume concerns us here, as it is in the Political Discourses , first published in 1752, his economic principles are set forth. What the reader may expect to find in these Discourses I prefer to let writers of renown tell. Thus Lord Brougham—
“Of the Political Discourses it would be difficult to speak in terms of too great commendation. They combine almost every {p-viii} excellence which can belong to such a performance. The reasoning is clear, and un­en­cum­bered with more words or more illus­tra­tions than are necessary for bringing out the doctrines. The learning is extensive, accurate, and profound, not only as to systems of philosophy, but as to history, whether modern or ancient. . . . The great merit, however, of these Discourses is their originality, and the new system of politics and political economy which they unfold. Mr. Hume is, beyond all doubt, the author of the modern doctrines which now rule the world of science, which are to a great extent the guide of practical statesmen, and are only prevented from being applied in their fullest extent to the affairs of nations by the clash­ing interests and the ignorant prejudices of certain powerful classes.”
“These Discourses are in truth the cradle of political economy; and much as that science has been investigated and expounded in later times, these earliest, shortest, and simplest developments of its principles are still read with delight even by those who are masters of all the literature of this great subject. But they possess a quality which more elaborate economists have striven after in vain, in being a pleasing object of study not only to the initiated, but to the ordinary popular reader, and of being admitted as just and true by many who cannot or will not understand the views of later writers on political economy. They have thus the rarely conjoined merit that, as they were the first to direct the way to the true sources of this department of knowledge, those who have gone farther, instead of superseding them, have in the general case confirmed their accuracy.”