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David Hume on Tories and Whigs


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 I'd like to present today, without further ado, something David Hume wrote about the Tories and the Whigs of his day.

As no party, in the present age can well support itself without a philosophical or speculative system of principles annexed to its political or practical one; we accordingly find that each of the factions into which this nation is divided has reared up a fabric of the former kind, in order to protect and cover that scheme of actions which it pursues. ... The one party [defenders of the absolute and divine right of kings, or Tories], by tracing up government to the DEITY, endeavor to render it so sacred and inviolate that it must be little less than sacrilege, however tyrannical it may become, to touch or invade it in the smallest article. The other party [the Whigs, or believers in constitutional monarchy], by founding government altogether on the consent of the PEOPLE suppose that there is a kind of original contract by which the subjects have tacitly reserved the power of resisting their sovereign, whenever they find themselves aggrieved by that authority with which they have for certain purposes voluntarily entrusted him.
— David Hume, "On Civil Liberty" [II.XII.1][17]
Hume argued that, though the consent of the governed was desirable, that is not good grounds for believing that any government historically came into existence through consent, i..e contract. He seemed to resent the myth-making of the Whigs even more than the myth-inheritance of the Tories. 
My intention here is not to exclude the consent of the people from being one just foundation of government where it has place. It is surely the best and most sacred of any. I only contend that it has very seldom had place in any degree and never almost in its full extent. And that therefore some other foundation of government must also be admitted.
— Ibid II.XII.20

And, okay that isn't an image of David Hume above, A different David. Throwing you a curve, this Jedi is. 

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