HKB
liberty, that they will probably be the last efforts of a despotic government. We may conclude that the liberty of Britain is gone for ever when these attempts shall succeed.
The opinion generally acceded to at the present day, that ministerial and judicial functions should be intrusted to responsible individuals, and not to bodies of men who may individually escape from a joint responsibility, is anticipated in the following passage:--"Honour is a great check upon mankind; but where a considerable body of men act together, this check is in a great measure removed, since a man is sure to be approved of by his own party for what promotes the common interest, and he soon learns to despise the clamour of adversaries."[139:1] The Grenville Act, and the subsequent measures for reducing the number of the judges on controverted elections, are a practical commentary on the truth of this remark.
It has often been observed, that foreigners have been the first to remark the leading peculiarities of the British constitution, and of the administration of justice in this country, in a manner rational and unimpassioned, yet so as to give them greater prominence, and a more full descriptive development than they obtain from our own impassioned party writers--an observation attested by the character which the works of Montesquieu and De Lolme held in the preceding century, and those of Thierry, Cottu, Meyer, and Raumer, have obtained in the present. The reason of this superiority is to be sought in the circumstance that the acuteness of these foreign observers was not obscured, or their feelings excited, by any connexion with the workings of the systems they have described; and the isolation from active life in which Hume was placed, appears to have in some measure given him like qualifications for the examination of our political institutions. He expresses a general partiality for the monarchical government of Britain, but it is a partiality of a calm utilitarian character, which would not be inconsistent with an equally great esteem for a well-ordered republic. On his philosophical appreciation of its merits, the monarchy has no stronger claims than these--that to have an individual at the head of the government who is merely the name through which other persons act, and who is not amenable to any laws, while the real actors are personally responsible for what they do in his name, is an expedient arrangement. That it is very convenient to have some fixed criterion such as the hereditary principle, which shall obviate the trouble and danger of a competition for this elevated station. But that these are all recommendations on the ground of expediency, which may be outweighed by others, and the misconduct of a weak or tyrannical prince will justify an alteration in that arrangement, which convenience only, and the avoidance of occasions for turbulence and anarchy, have sanctioned.
It may be observed, that in the edition of these essays which he directed to be published after his death, many of those passages which bear a democratic tendency are suppressed. Such was the fate of the passage in "The Liberty of the Press" quoted above, and of the remarks put within brackets in the quotation which follows, from the essay on "The Parties of Great Britain."