Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, Part II, Essay XIII, OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE. Library of Economics and Liberty

In the former essay, we endeavoured to renounce the speculative systems of political relation advanced in this nation; as well the phantasmal system of the wholeness party, as the philosophical of the other. We come in a flash to examine the applicative consequences, deduced by apiece party, with regard to the measures of sufferance due to sovereigns. As the obligation to arbiter is founded entirely on the interests of society, which admit rough-cut abstinence from property, in order to protect peace among human being; it is evident, that, when the execution of referee would be accompanied with very subtle consequences, that virtue must be suspended, and concede place to humanity utility, in much(prenominal) extraordinary and much(prenominal) pressing emergencies. The proverb, guild Justitia & ruat Clum, let nicety be performed, though the universe be destroyed, is appargonntly false, and by sacrificing the end to the means, shews a preposterous root word of t he subordination of duties. What governor of a towns throng makes any misgiving of burning the suburbs, when they assuage the approaches of the enemy? Or what general abstains from dirty money a so-so(p) country, when the necessities of war require it, and he cannot other subsist his soldiery? The case is the homogeneous with the responsibility of subjection; and common star teaches us, that, as brass binds us to obedience only on account of its inclining to open utility, that duty must always, in extraordinary cases, when public ruin would ostensibly attend obedience, father to the primary and certain obligation. Salus populi suprema Lex, the safety of the people is the supreme law. This maxim is agreeable to the sentiments of reality in either ages: Nor is any one, when he reads of the insurrections against NERO a or PHILIP the Second, so preposterous with party-systems, as not to wish achievement to the enterprize, and praise the undertakers. regular our hi gh monarchic party, in foulness of their sublime theory, are forced, in such(prenominal) cases, to judge, and feel, and approve, in configuration to the rest of mankind.