In intellectual history and the history of political thought, the way texts were read (or misread) is often as significant as the authors’ intentions. This is especially true in the case of authors such as David Hume, who are often intentionally paradoxical, which is why the approach of “reception history” is sometimes equally as informative as work that simply addresses the texts themselves. As recent research on the influence of Hume's politics upon his contemporaries and later generations demonstrates, he was sometimes considered a defender of political liberty.Footnote 1 On the other hand, because of his magnum opus, the History of England, Hume has been regarded as a “Tory” historian, an assumption that sometimes affected his reputation as a political thinker. This “conservative” reading has been reinforced in the work of Isaiah Berlin and Lawrence L. Bongie, which emphasizes Hume's counter-Enlightenment or counterrevolutionary credentials, avant la lettre, through studying Hume's influence on French and German critics of the Enlightenment.Footnote 2 Donald W. Livingston, in his foreword to Bongie's work, also asserts that “Hume's History—not Burke's Reflections—would appear to be the primal source of modern conservatism.”Footnote 3 Hume's image remains as ambiguous now as in his own time, partly because his impartiality intentionally transcended the dichotomy of contemporary party politics. Hume's rather minor and enigmatic essay “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” in the Political Discourses (1752) exemplifies this.
Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth” has received varying degrees of critical acclaim and spawned a multitude of scholarly interpretations. This is partly due to the apparent ambiguity of the essay, which opens with a critique of utopian theorists before nevertheless presenting Hume's scheme for an ideal republic. Those critics who focus on its opening paragraph have emphasized the essay's opposition to radical political reform.Footnote 4 Others claim that the essay, in its entirety, is merely a satire aimed at discrediting the value of elaborating an “armchair theory” of government.Footnote 5 Then there are several important studies on the relevance of this essay to his overall political philosophy.Footnote 6 My concern in this essay is neither with Hume's intention, nor with the significance of the essay for his political philosophy. This essay instead aims to demonstrate how and to what extent Hume's contemporaries and later generations utilized his essay.Footnote 7
In this context the possible influence of Hume's essay on The Federalist, No 10 (22 November 1787), has been much discussed,Footnote 8 although the paucity of evidence for a link between the two works means that some vagueness still remains about this intellectual debt.Footnote 9 However, the resonance between Hume's perfect commonwealth and eighteenth-century political realities is not limited to the issue of a nascent American democracy. In France, before and after the Revolution, Hume's plan received some attention among philosophes, if considerably less than his History of England. Some eighteenth-century British radicals highlighted resemblances between Hume's plan and the National Assembly or the French Constitution of 1791.Footnote 10 Obviously, the evaluations of Hume's plan by his contemporaries and the next generation do not support a claim that Hume himself composed the plan from a progressive or forward-looking viewpoint. However, these commentaries demonstrate that, contrary to general opinion, his idea of a large republic was the subject of serious discussions among eighteenth-century radicals and political reformers. During the nineteenth-century British parliamentary reform movement, Hume's plan also supplied an important model for moderate reform, a legacy also compatible with a view of Hume's politics that stresses his more cautious or even conservative leanings. My essay therefore combines these variant accounts in one location, as well as determining a new reading of Hume's essay.
HUME’S “PERFECT COMMONWEALTH” IN OUTLINE
Before addressing the main subject of this essay, it is useful to summarize the basic content of Hume's essay. As usual, he begins with a warning against the dangers of easy and irresponsible political reforms and recommends that we cherish “an established government.” Nevertheless, he continues, it is not without worth to examine “what is most perfect in the kind, that we may be able to bring any real constitution or form of government as near it as possible, by such gentle alterations and innovations as may not give too great disturbance to society.”Footnote 11 After evaluating some merits and demerits of Harrington's Oceana, he proposes “a form of government, to which I cannot, in theory, discover any considerable objection.”Footnote 12 He begins by dividing “Great Britain and Ireland, or any territory of equal extent,” into a hundred counties, and then subdividing each county into a hundred parishes. Subsequently, each parish elects one county representative annually (ten thousand in total). Finally, these county representatives choose one senator from amongst themselves by ballot (one hundred senators in total). The senators are endowed with the whole executive authority (though without veto power), while the county representatives possess the whole legislative power. “All free governments,” Hume claims, “must consist of two councils, a lesser and greater; or, in other words, of a senate and people.” However, “a large assembly” is ill-equipped for debate, while a senate is at perpetual risk of “combination and division.” He resolves both problems by the following institutional devices: (1) the senate is dependent on the large assembly through a two-tier election, (2) the number of senators is limited to one hundred and (3) the senate is deprived of a veto.Footnote 13 “Every new law must first be debated in the senate” and then voted on by the county representatives. In short, Hume's plan envisages a large republic with a bicameral system, both houses being democratically elected through a two-stage process.
Little wonder Hume's plan sounded utopian, then as now. His proposal for a large republic appeared less feasible than Montesquieu's for the federation of republics,Footnote 14 especially after the collapse of Cromwell's Commonwealth in Britain. Additionally, constituting a representative body of ten thousand through annual election was difficult to imagine, although Hume considers it “a basis large enough for any free government.”Footnote 15 Either way, neither Hume's seriousness nor his intentions concern us directly, for in what follows this essay reviews the reception of his plan in France, before discussing the British context. For, as has been pointed out, there were many intellectual attempts to compose a “perfect plan” of government for a large country in France before the Revolution.Footnote 16 Along with models drawn from Abbé Saint-Pierre, Montesquieu and Rousseau, Hume's plan for a large republic had good reason to be referred to in French debate.
CONTEMPORARY RECEPTIONS OF HUME’S PLAN IN REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE
Bongie's study of the influence of Hume's History in the French intellectual milieu before and after the Revolution is invaluable. However, he seems to underestimate the significance of Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth,” and mentions its reception in France only in passing.Footnote 17 The same is true of Michel Malherbe's article “Hume's Reception in France,”Footnote 18 and contemporary French responses to Hume's plan are outside of the scope of James Fieser's Early Responses to Hume's Moral, Literary and Political Writings.Footnote 19
The Political Discourses was published in 1752 in Britain and first appeared in French in 1754 in two translations by Eléazar Mauvillon and Abbé Le Blanc. At least four different versions were produced before the Revolution. Together with the aforementioned two translations, there was a new edition by Le Blanc (1755) and an anonymous translation attributed to Mademoiselle de la Chaux (1767), although the latter omitted the “Perfect Commonwealth” and some other essays.Footnote 20 Importantly, the Political Discourses was also reviewed. The anonymous reviewer of the Nouvelle bibliothèque germanique ou Histoire littéraire of 1754 provides short comments on each essay, including Hume's plan. After neatly summarizing the introductory part of Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth,” they introduce Hume's plan as a constitution “which [Hume] considers the most favorable” (qu’il juge la plus avantageuse).Footnote 21 The reviewer concludes by noting Hume's emphasis on the advantages of established government and his argument that authority rather than reason governs the common people.
Another French commentator who wished to underplay the counterreformist elements of the “Perfect Commonwealth” removed the introductory part of the original. Thus Hume's warning against hasty political reformations and his evaluations of Harrington's Oceana were excluded and the piece began with the translation of Hume's plan. This translation of the “Perfect Commonwealth” was published under the title “Form of Government for the English people, proposed by M. David Hume” under the heading “Angleterre (Loix d’)” in the Dictionnaire universel des sciences morale, économique, politique et diplomatique (1778).Footnote 22 Actually, it was not even a first-hand translation, rather an excerpt from Le Blanc's (without acknowledgement, as was then common). This dictionary was edited by the French natural philosopher Jean-Baptiste-René Robinet, who, in collaboration with Charles-Joseph Panckoucke, published the “Supplement” to Diderot and d’Alembert's Encyclopédie.Footnote 23 Robinet in turn was the royal censor of translations of Hume before the Revolution and thus well versed in Hume's writings. It is plausible that this anonymous commentator was Robinet himself. The footnotes of this excerpt, added by the commentator, contain some curious comparisons between Hume's plan and his other writings, as well as with Harrington's Oceana. In one footnote, the French commentator mentions Hume's essay “Whether the British Government inclines more to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic.” In this work, Hume argues that the British government had again begun to incline towards absolute monarchy after a long political tide towards republicanism. The commentator argues, however, that he does not know whether this conclusion would accord with Hume's own observation on the significant changes in public opinion over the intervening fifty years delivered by the progress of science and freedom, and even with this Scottish author's admission that “[h]ad men been in the same disposition at the revolution, as they are at present, monarchy would have run a great risque [sic] of being entirely lost in this island.”Footnote 24 Finally, the French commentator asserts: “this last reflection seems to announce the wish [voeu] of the Englishmen at least, if it is not that of the Author.”Footnote 25
Some French philosophes grasped the opportunity to cite Hume's plan in support of their own. In one chapter of the Treatise on Man (1781), Helvétius poses thirty-one questions about the best legislation. Question 8 mentions Hume's plan approvingly, the Scottish philosopher being the only authority cited in this chapter. Helvétius inquires “[i]f the means proposed by M. Hume, in his small but excellent treatise on a perfect republic, are sufficient” to produce the equilibrium of power among the different classes of citizens.Footnote 26 Helvétius proposed a plan resembling Hume's but with the important difference that he emphasized the equal distribution of land and wealth and an educational plan.Footnote 27 Helvétius's plan was to divide “a country as large as France” into thirty republics and assign a nearly equal territory to each. According to him, each republic should be connected to the other twenty-nine by a mutual-defence treaty, and a superior council composed of four deputies from each.
The Comte de Mirabeau touched upon Hume's plan in a footnote to his Considérations sur l’ordre de Cincinnatus (1785), comparing it with Robert Wallace's utopian scheme:
Hume has entitled one of his essays, The idea of a perfect common-wealth. This tract, which is vastly superior to that of Mr. Wallace, would have had much more success, if the same author's history of England, which is charged with partiality, infidelity, and a bias to arbitrary notions, had not prejudiced the public against the principle of this fine writer. To me, notwithstanding, it appears unquestionable, that in this, and in some other of his essays, Hume has proved himself a friend of liberty [ami de la liberté]. It is, however, remarkable, that this philosopher has not, in his idea of a perfect common-wealth, said a word about education, except where he makes a feeble allusion to our universities and our religions.Footnote 28
Mirabeau's comparison is significant in highlighting the lack of consideration given to the educational system in Hume's plan. His mention of Hume's plan is also curious because this French writer and politician called the Scottish philosopher “a friend of liberty,” while lamenting the tarnishing of the reputation of Hume's plan by the author's supposed conservative bias, said to be revealed especially in the History of England. This comment both demonstrates the seriousness of the responses of Hume's French contemporaries to his supposedly progressive idea of representative government, and explains why direct references to Hume's plan were not more frequent in France.
In his Considerations on France (1797), on the other hand, Comte de Maistre emphasized the difference between the talent necessary to be a political theorist and that to be legislator, mentioning Hume's plan:
I have heard a great supporter of the Republic seriously lamenting that the French had not found in Hume's works a piece entitled Plan for a Perfect Republic. O coecas hominum mentes [Oh how blind are the minds of men]. If you see an ordinary man of good sense who has never shown in any way any external sign of superiority, you cannot be sure that he would not be a good legislator. There is no reason to say yes or no. But if it is a question of Bacon, Locke, and Montesquieu, etc, you can say no without hesitation, for the one talent they do possess proves that they do not have the other.Footnote 29
It seems clear from Maistre's authoritarian political standpoint that he viewed Hume's plan for a perfect commonwealth negatively. It is also telling that in the very same book Maistre included a précis entitled “From a History of the French Revolution by David Hume” extracted from Hume's History—a curious bricolage intended to appropriate the arguments of History for anti-revolutionary ideology. Significantly, both Maistre and Mirabeau demonstrate that Hume's plan was not considered to be in tune with the tone of his other writings, especially his History.
Clear mentions of Hume's plan were less frequent in France, either before or after the Revolution, than in Britain. Nonetheless, Hume's plan had relevance for, though not necessarily direct influence over, other schemes proposed by many French authors throughout the extensive debates that took place concerning a new constitution in France around the turn of the eighteenth century. Chisick points out, for example, that “[i]t may be worth remarking that Hume's proposal for a franchise based on the ownership of property is in substance the same as those put forward by Turgot in his Mémoire sur les municipalités and by Baron d’Holbach in the article ‘Representatives’ in the Encyclopédie.”Footnote 30 Both philosophers, who were frequently in Hume's company during his stay in France as an undersecretary of state, were probably familiar with Hume's political writings. As Keith Baker correctly argues, however, Turgot's Mémoire, actually drafted by Dupont de Nemours, was rather more heavily influenced by the Physiocratic reforms that aimed to restore the traditional provincial estates.Footnote 31
What seems more relevant to the French contemporary political context than his idea of a franchise based on property ownership is the multilayered election system that Hume proposed. For example, Abbé Sieyès, the author of Qu’est-ce que le tiers état?, proposed a representative government with gradual elections similar to Hume’s. His pamphlet, The Views of the Executive Means Available to the Representatives of France in 1789 (composed around 1788–9), proposed a three-tier election system, whereby France was to be divided into 40,000 parishes, the parish deputies were to assemble from twenty parishes, “and if fifty circumscriptions of that size were to form a province, and if fifty provinces encompassing the total number of parishes were to elect the national legislature, then it would stand at a third level of representation.”Footnote 32 In this scheme, like Hume, he emphasized “the dependence of deputies on their constituents.”Footnote 33 It is also interesting to note that Sieyès's attempts to realize political stability and soundness in a large republic did not rely on public virtue, but were to be achieved through institutional design.Footnote 34 Leaving aside the issue of his seriousness in this essay, Hume seems to share these characteristics in his “Perfect Commonwealth.” As Sonenscher excellently elucidates in his Before the Deluge, Sieyès's scheme, though not published in a single text, influenced many French Revolutionaries. One was the aforementioned Comte de Mirabeau, who, in collaboration with Sieyès, presented the gradual election system to the National Assembly in December 1789, although the proposal was finally defeated. There is no textual evidence that Sieyès read Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth,”Footnote 35 but Sonenscher admits that “Sieyès's political thought shared the same concerns” as Hume and James Madison in their argumentations over the feasibility of a large republic.Footnote 36
Seen from a broader historical perspective, however, Sieyès's proposal for a multilayered election is not as innovative as it initially appears. The two-tier election had already been adopted in the election in March 1789 to send delegates to the general assembly of the tiers état. As we will see below, a British contemporary critic discerned that this system could be traced still further back, to the electoral system of the traditional Estates General, which contemporary “bourgeois” deputies obviously wished to retain.Footnote 37 The twofold election was also retained in the Constitution of 1791 and beyond. This Constitution instituted the sovereignty of people, the constitutional monarchy, the single-chamber system, and the election with limited suffrage (the distinction between active and passive citizens). Under this Constitution, France had a one-chamber system with a twofold election. What is important is not to underplay the innovativeness of Sieyès, but rather to focus on the fact that both Sieyès's plan and the Constitution of 1791, despite their differences, represent compromises between their required consistency with the ideals of the French Revolution (liberty, equality, fraternity) and their resistance to Robespierre's more radical claims for universal suffrage and direct democracy. This suggests, as we will see below, why some British radicals were able to discern the similarities between the National Assembly or the 1791 Constitution and Hume's plan, and why James Mackintosh, a reformist Whig, considered Hume's plan a suitable platform for moderate electoral reforms. For now, it suffices to say that Hume's plan, translated into French immediately after its publication in Britain, reviewed in journals and commented on by his French friends, proved timely for the intellectual context of the most tumultuous period of France's political history.
HUME’S PLAN AS AN ALLEGEDLY “SEDITIOUS” ESSAY
The influence of Hume's plan among eighteenth-century British radicals has also been much underestimated. It is still not very well known that Thomas Paine quoted Hume's plan in the Common Sense, or, to be exact, in the Additions to Common Sense (1776),Footnote 38 which was integrated into later editions. After quoting from the “Perfect Commonwealth” Hume's “republican” anxiety about the standing army as a mortal distemper, Paine avers, citing Hume again, that “[m]any object to a Republican Government as impracticable in a large state. ‘The contrary of this (says Hume) [Per. Com. 302.] seems evident . . .’.”Footnote 39 By naming him, Paine positively acknowledged Hume's authority on this point, even if he did not agree with all of its details. For example, in his anonymous text Four Letters on Interesting Subjects (1776), Paine strongly supported a single chamber, rather than the two-chamber system Hume proposed.Footnote 40 According to Claeys, however, he gradually changed his mind and, in 1792, finally accepted the effectiveness of a bicameral system.Footnote 41 As Kalyvas and Katznelson acutely observe, Paine and Madison basically agree in their criticisms of monarchies as well as ancient republics because both lack a representative system. By emphasizing the modern nature of representation, both developed the ancient language of republicanism into that of modern liberalism through their focus on the feasibility of large republics.Footnote 42 Hitherto, Madison's possible intellectual debt to Hume in the Federalist, No 10, has been examined mainly through the internal evidence, and the debate remains unresolved. However, considering Paine's mention of Hume's plan clearly evinces the significance of Hume as an intellectual source for the many political theorists of large republics.
Such use of Hume's writings by radicals produced unease among their more conservative contemporaries. As Mark G. Spencer points out, James Chalmers, a Scottish-born Loyalist, cited a passage from Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth” in his criticism of Paine, emphasizing the possible dangers of utopianism. Chalmers regarded Paine's “Quixotic system” as “really an insult to our understanding.”Footnote 43 Chalmers's criticism thus obliquely references Paine's use of Hume's plan.Footnote 44 The discrepancy between assessments of Hume's intentions and seriousness in this essay can be repeatedly discerned in Britain (and Revolutionary America) as well as in France.
Another early mention of Hume's plan appeared in “Major” John Cartwright's Take Your Choice!, his first work on parliamentary reform, published in the same year as the Common Sense.Footnote 45 In this pamphlet, he called for universal suffrage with equal representation and annual parliaments, citing Hume as an authority. What is interesting is that Cartwright himself acknowledged some difficulty in establishing the credentials of this Scottish philosopher:
As to the other objection to our plan of reforming, I own it puzzles me. It comes from Mr. Hume, who is so respectable as a historian, a philosopher and moralist; and, therefore, it is a serious one: so serious, indeed, that I am at a loss for any other answer to it, but—to burst out a laughing in Mr. Hume's face. It would do no great harm, however, methinks, just to try the experiment . . . Mr. Hume will, I dare say, allow me a little scepticism as to the justness and weight of his objection; which I never can believe until I shall know by experiment.
Cartwright wittily turned Hume's own scepticism against his habitual objections to harsh reforms. He added a footnote to the last sentence just quoted, saying, “Mr. Hume was living when this was written.” Unlike other radicals, Cartwright did not directly name Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth” but he probably expected readers to know which of Hume's essays he meant.Footnote 46 The second, enlarged, edition of Cartwright's work was published in the following year under the title The Legislative Rights of the Commonalty Vindicated; or, Take Your Choice!. In a footnote to this edition, he cited for the first time Hume's rather ambiguous remark on the forty-shilling freeholder in the History of England: “This sum was equivalent to near twenty pounds a-year of our present money; and it were to be wished, that the spirit, as well as letter of this law, had been maintained.”Footnote 47 Cartwright appended his own comment: “it were, in my opinion, no less to be wished, that historians would be a little more cautious, in delivering their sentiments on points of such importance. The spirit of this law, under the mask of concern for the public peace, was rank fraud and tyranny.”Footnote 48 Hume himself withheld his views on the issue of American independence or British parliamentary reform in his published writings: he referred directly to the former and indirectly to the latter only in his later letters.Footnote 49 Nonetheless, his texts were widely adopted in, and adapted to, contemporary political debates just before and after his death.
Awareness of the potential subversive force of Hume's plan was heightened in the aftermath of the French Revolution. In the early 1790s, the British government, fearful of possible repercussions, imposed regulations intended to guard against seditious libel or traitorous correspondence. Several reformers invoked Hume's vision in response. For example, William Godwin cites Hume as “an eminent example” of republican writers in a pamphlet published in 1795.Footnote 50 This work criticizes the Treasonable Practices Bill introduced by Grenville and the Seditious Meetings Bill moved by Pitt—commonly called the “Gagging Acts.” Godwin not only juxtaposes Hume's perfect commonwealth and Rousseau's “Treatise of the Social Compact,” but also asserts, after a long panegyric to Hume as a philosopher, that “we will suppose, I say, this wonderful genius [Hume] to be arraigned as the author of the composition.” He proceeds to imagine Hume convicted of high treason under Grenville's bill:Footnote 51
Hume then upon this charge is to be fined, imprisoned, and set in the pillory; and, if he afterwards authorize the republication of his essay, he is to be transported to Botany Bay . . . Hume, for publishing his Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth, guilty of high treason! Conducted to the place of execution, and there hanged, drawn, and quartered!Footnote 52
Godwin explains that Hume's intention is “to reconcile men by degrees to republican principles, or at least to wean them from the prevailing prepossessions against these principles.”Footnote 53 As Godwin was familiar with Hume's Essays and historical writings, he seems unlikely to have been merely exploiting Hume as a mere foil or cheap authority. It is important to note that Hume's plan was regarded as a useful contribution to the self-justification of those who advocated political reform on a theoretical basis.
A similar use of Hume as a strategic defense against charges of sedition can be found in other writings produced during the mid-1790s. For instance, Thomas Muir, a prominent Scottish political reformer who studied law under John Millar at the University of Glasgow, was accused of exciting disaffection by seditious speeches in 1793. He defended himself as follows:
When Mr. Hume published his Essay upon a Perfect Commonwealth, did not he, as strongly as he possibly could, declare that he thought this model preferable to the British constitution, even in its purest and best principles? But supposing Mr. Hume to have been a member of the Society of the Friends of the People, what would have been his conduct in it? Would he have said to men who were assembled to renovate constitutional rights only, You must give up the constitution entirely; it is defective and imperfect when compared to the offspring of my fancy; it is this last which you must adopt, and reject the former. But Mr. Hume would have held forth no such language; he would have said to them, ‘. . . If then reformation is your object, and not revolution, however much you may approve of my speculative system, it must not operate upon you for a moment in practice’ . . .Footnote 54
Muir went on to claim that this is because he “refused to recommend the Works of Mr. Paine” that could “mislead weak minds.” Muir justified this position by distinguishing between speculative systems of government and real seditious actions, emphasizing the harmlessness of the former. This is exactly the same strategy Godwin adopted in his Consideration. A similar “authorization” can be found in a debate on the Treasonable Practices and Seditious Meetings Bill in the House of Commons. Joseph Jekyll, a Foxite MP opposing these “Gagging Acts,” repeated the same justification in one of the debates, noting that otherwise “Mr. Hume for his Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth might have been sent to languish with Muir and [Thomas Fyshe] Palmer on the desert shores of South America, amidst felons and outcasts of society.”Footnote 55
HUME AS AN ORIGINATOR OF THE TWO-TIER ELECTORAL SYSTEM
As Dew notes, despite the antipathy to the extra-parliamentary movement Hume revealed in later letters, his writings were often cited and deployed in the radical journal the North Briton. Based on the arbitrary and stretched interpretations of his writings in these radical presses, Dew claims that “these authors [including Hume] are treated as largely interchangeable” and that “it does not particularly matter which writer is employed, so long as one (or more) of them are used.”Footnote 56 It is certain, as we saw above, that discussions of Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth” by some radicals did not consider its content in depth. Dew seems to underestimate, however, the possible influences and impacts that “the great works of political philosophy” could have on the much wider intellectual movement of political radicalism around the end of the eighteenth century. Donald Winch has shown in detail the extent of the ideological scramble during the post-Revolutionary era for control of the intellectual legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment.Footnote 57
Looking at some of the internal discussions of Hume's plan by British radicals, we can see how they highlighted a resemblance between Hume's plan and the National Assembly in France, although there is no evidence that Hume had France in mind when writing his plan. One of the earliest examples comes from Richard Price, who enjoyed Hume's friendship despite their differences on philosophical matters.Footnote 58 On 4 November 1790, Price addressed a dinner gathering held by the Revolution Society (the Society for Commemorating the Revolution in Great Britain) at the London Tavern. It is interesting to note that his previous address to the same society on the theme “love of country,” delivered exactly a year before, had provoked Burke into writing his Reflections, which was finally published just three days before this address. After a toast to “The Parliament of Britain—May it become a National Assembly,” he cited Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth”:
The mass of the people (not paupers, or minors, or in servitude), are entitled to votes . . . [B]ut the persons thus elected are not to be the representatives, but the electors of the representatives: that is, the body of the people are to select such persons in every department as they shall think fitter for the office of chusing for them such persons as shall be best qualified to represent them in the National Assembly. This mode of appointing the members of a Legislative Assembly in a great kingdom was first suggested by Mr. HUME, in one of his political essays, entitled, “An Idea of a perfect Commonwealth”.Footnote 59
Price proceeds to say that a method “better fitted to exclude corruption from elections, and to collect into a legislature as much as possible of the ability and wisdom of a kingdom, can scarcely be conceived.” It is important to note that Price praised Hume's plan because of its wider franchise and the two-tier system, which he thought would prevent corruption in elections.
As we shall see below, other radicals discerned the similarities not only between Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth” and the National Assembly, but also between his plan and the Constitution of 1791, on the basis of which the Legislative Assembly was to be summoned (they did not always clearly differentiate between the National and the Legislative Assemblies). As mentioned above, under the 1791 Constitution, citizens were divided into “active” and “passive” categories. The “active citizens,” those who paid a certain amount of tax, chose the electors, who in turn elected their representatives. Hence the two-tier electoral system was retained, while the system of limited suffrage resembled Hume's proposals restricting the franchise based on property.Footnote 60
Despite the parallels drawn by contemporaries, there were many differences between the National and Legislative Assemblies, and between these bodies and the imagined system laid out in Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth.” The most important distinction is that in Hume's proposal for a two-stage election the county representatives elect the senators (and county magistrates). The meeting of these senators would be endowed with executive power while the meeting of representatives would receive legislative power. On the other hand, the first-stage “primary assemblies” in the National and Legislative Assemblies had no legislative power. Despite this fundamental difference, Price and other radicals were able to discern the resemblance between the French constitutional arrangements after the Revolution and Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth.” Following Price's speech, the idea that there was a similarity between the National (and/or Legislative) Assembly and Hume's plan was immediately diffused among some radicals. In 1792, Benjamin Flower, a radical journalist, commented in his annotations on the new French Constitution that “[s]imilar plans [to the French electoral assemblies] have been formerly pointed out by theorists (Mr. Hume in particular) as the most perfect they could devise.”Footnote 61
Actually, Price's explanation was not accepted without dissent. The anonymous author of An Historical Sketch of the French Revolution from its Commencement to the Year 1792 (published in 1792) argued, “the system of composing a National Assembly of the Representatives of Representatives, has existed for ages in France, and therefore was not first suggested by Mr. Hume in his idea of a perfect commonwealth (as Dr. Price thinks).”Footnote 62 In the same vein, John Gillies, Historiographer Royal for Scotland, specified the similarity between Hume's plan and the two-order system of deputies in place in France since the Estates General of 1484. After this date, argues Gillies, the election of representatives to the third estate was two-tier (sometimes more), although the Estates General had not been summoned since 1614.Footnote 63
Aside from the debate over the accuracy of attributing to Hume the invention of the two-tier electoral system, there were other responses to Price's observation. Mary Wollstonecraft's An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution (1794) confirmed the innovative nature of Hume's plan, contrasting it with what she judged to be the political immaturity of France:
Thus it happened in France, that Hume's idea of a perfect commonwealth, the adaptation of which would be eligible only when civilization has arrived at a much greater degree of perfection, and knowledge is more generally diffused than at the present period, was nevertheless chosen as the model of their new government, with a few exceptions, by the constituent assembly; which choice doubtless proceeded from the members not having had an opportunity to acquire a knowledge of practical liberty.Footnote 64
From these examples, it is evident that Hume's plan for a perfect commonwealth acquired a following among radicals, who tended to regard it in isolation from the rest of his oeuvre. Considering the scant mentions of Hume's other political writings in Price and Wollstonecraft, the discussion of Hume's plan is quite conspicuous.Footnote 65 Nevertheless, those radical-minded writers who mentioned Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth” did not necessarily distort its contents, even if the conclusions they drew from it were much more radical than its author's intentions.
It is important to note that Price clearly praised the system of two-tier elections, along with the widening of suffrage suggested in Hume's plan. A few more minor works that name Hume as the inventor of the two-tier electoral system also provide evidence for the dissemination of Hume's plan among radicals. In The Principles of Government, in a Dialogue between a Gentlemen and a Farmer (1797), William “Oriental” Jones, an English philologist and radical Whig, agrees with Hume's distrust of the political wisdom of the lower orders, adding “[t]hat [Hume’s] plan, then of representation, seems to be [a] good one, which like the American, rises in pyramidical proportion.”Footnote 66 This book was distributed gratis by the Society for Constitutional Information, of which Jones was a member. Consequently, Jones was accused of seditious libel. As another example, William Taylor of Norwich, a radical Unitarian, critically analysed the National Assembly decree introducing the delegatory election. He concluded by summarizing the various preferable schemes for a parliamentary constitution using three points: “Universal to privileged suffrage, [/] Gradationed to direct representation, [/] And rotatory to simultaneous dismissal of the delegates.” He ascribed the second of these ideas to Hume.Footnote 67
In the early nineteenth century, Hume became widely accepted as an originator of this idea of a two-tier electoral system. James Mackintosh was among the most important authors to establish Hume's reputation as a proponent of a moderate reform plan with a focus on the two-tier electoral system. In one of his articles in the Edinburgh Review in 1818, he introduced Hume's plan for a two-tier election as one of “the most remarkable” plans “which have been adopted or proposed, to render uniform popular election consistent with public quiet,” and juxtaposed it with “that lately proposed in France.” It should be noted that this article was a review of Jeremy Bentham's Plan of Parliamentary Reform, in the Form of Catechism (1817). As Donald Winch acutely observes, this important article by Mackintosh stood at the threshold of the estrangement between philosophic Whigs and philosophic Radicals. While attacking the moderate parliamentary reform proposed by the Whigs, Bentham supported equal representation and suffrage, annual parliaments, and the secret ballot, as laid out in his Plan of Parliamentary Reform (1817).Footnote 68 At the other end of the spectrum, Mackintosh attempted to make a distinction between radical and moderate parliamentary reforms throughout English history since the Agreement of the People (1647/49), supporting those he deemed moderate.Footnote 69 Mackintosh was ambivalent towards Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth” because it “leaves to the people only those subordinate elections which would excite no interest in their minds, and would consequently fail in attaining one of the principal objects of popular elections.”Footnote 70 He also compared Hume's proposals with “the singular plan of Mr. Horne Tooke” that admitted a wider suffrage by introducing additional votes in the case of a shortage of voters.Footnote 71 Despite these reservations, Mackintosh considered Hume's plan among the more moderate ideas for reform, contrasting him with the radical reformer Bentham.Footnote 72 Mackintosh's contribution to the reception of Hume's plan lies in his identification of it as a moderate reform with the intention of maintaining “public quiet” by means of a two-fold election. In so doing, he proposed a coherent understanding of Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth” more in line with the moderate aspects of his thought.
By this time, the fate of the French Revolution had become all too clear to British contemporaries. It was therefore not difficult to reach a negative judgment with respect to Hume's plan too. Christopher Wyvill, a moderate reformer and Anglican clergyman, claimed that Hume “borrowed the Ballot and the Twofold Election, with some variations, from the Oceana, and improved his own imaginary Commonwealth by correcting the most obvious defect of his Predecessor's plan.” Wyvill observed that Hume restricted the right of suffrage more than Harrington did through “a dread of Popular Election, which is not strange indeed in a speculator like Hume, acute and profound, but less friendly than Harrington to the interests of the People.” Then he went on to comment, in a more negative vein, that this two-tier election was, “unhappily for France,” recommended by French philosophes. Wyvill himself strongly supported simple representation.Footnote 73
Another example can be found in a note written by Henry James Pye on his translation of Xenophon. This English poet was not a radical, but an anti-Jacobin (Pittite) writer. He wrote that any attempt to obviate the possibility of widespread venality and abuse of influence in elections produced by the introduction of equal and general representation,
by intermediate stages of election, like the plan in Hume's idea of a perfect commonwealth, (something resembling [that] which, was adopted in France,) would be attended with more serious ill consequences; since by taking away all immediate connection between the people at large and the legislative assembly of representatives, it would entirely destroy the responsibility of the latter.Footnote 74
Significantly, both writers, Wyvill and Pye, despite the difference in their political positions, ascribe the system of two-tier elections in Hume's plan to his misgivings about the political competence of the common people (Wyvill heeded the differences between Hume and Harrington on this point). For both writers, therefore, Hume's moderate plan involving a two-tier election—which contains neither a radical educational plan nor support for universal suffrage—does not necessarily contradict his other writings.Footnote 75
A reporter for the Analytical Review, or History or Literature on Irish affairs in 1792 also recounts an interesting anecdote about the Catholic Convention held in Dublin in the same year. In order to petition for elective suffrage and equal participation in the trial by jury, the Roman Catholic representatives in Ireland were urged to ensure that they represented “the sentiments of the Catholics at large.” This was because the House of Commons had rejected their former petitions as reflecting the views of only “a few factious people in the metropolis.” According to the report, during the convention, one Mr. Broughall mentioned “a circular letter” by “Mr. [Edward] Byrne” that calls for the election of a delegation representing the collective will of the Roman Catholics, in order to renew the appeal for their suffrage. The report continues to state that “[t]his plan, [Broughall] said, was not borrowed from the French national assembly, as had been asserted, but from Hume's ‘Essay on a perfect commonwealth . . .’.” If the said proposal was executed, he adds, “the nation would have remained in perfect tranquillity.”Footnote 76 Although this story is not verifiable (and there is no direct mention of Hume's essay in Byrne's letter), it does not seem implausible, considering the detailed manner in which the election of delegates is described in this letter.Footnote 77 More importantly, the passage demonstrates that contemporary readers could easily identify the similarities between the French National Assembly and Hume's plan, and the latter's aim of minimizing the possible social ferments produced by republican governments.
It is clear that Hume's plan also provoked some critical assessments. Jean Louis de Lolme, a Swiss-born exile, criticized Hume's proposal for two-tier elections in A Parallel between the English Constitution and the Former Government of Sweden, because “he took it for granted that it was enough, in order to constitute Representatives of the People, that the People, after electing them, should call them so.” However, he continues, “the People never are represented, till the interest of their Representatives is identical with theirs.” For de Lolme, the British Constitution has already realized this goal. Therefore, he concludes, Hume “would have looked no farther for the model of a perfect Commonwealth, and seen that what he was seeking on the foot-steps of Plato, was already at home.”Footnote 78 Harsher criticism appeared in On National Government by George Ensor. He was a friend of Bentham and James Mill, and the very person who accompanied the fourteen-year-old John Stuart Mill to France. He mentioned Hume's plan as follows: “Was ever any scheme more defective? . . . In this I look in vain for the acuteness and sagacity so eminently displayed by that philosopher.”Footnote 79 Despite these negative assessments, it is undeniable that Hume's plan for a large republic received serious consideration: none dismissed it as mere satire.
TENSIONS BETWEEN HUME’S PLAN AND HIS OTHER WRITINGS
As we have seen, not only did Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth” continue to divide his contemporaries and the next generation, but it was also freely utilized by opposing parties. One could employ this ambiguous essay to support entirely contradictory positions by emphasizing different parts of the text. If the aim was to stress Hume's conservatism, one could omit the main body of the essay and retain only the introductory part, with its warning against sloppy reformations. For those who concentrated on this part of the work, it was easy to connect Hume's apprehension concerning the dangers of easy reforms with Edmund Burke's criticism of the “science of constructing a commonwealth,” which the latter argued should not “be taught a priori.”Footnote 80 If the aim was to legitimize one's own reform plan, on the other hand, one could do the opposite and borrow the authority of Hume as an earlier example of the “speculative” reformer. Such arbitrary and one-sided citations became common practice, as we saw above in the two contemporary French reviews. Dugald Stewart used the former method around 1792, when the French Revolution had begun its disquieting turn towards the Terror. When he delivered his “Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith,” as Emma Rothschild points out,Footnote 81 he had to emphasize the harmlessness of Smith's laissez-faire doctrine. This was precisely because, as Stewart later recalls,
at the period when this memoir was read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, it was not unusual, even among men of some talents and information, to confound, studiously, the speculative doctrines of Political Economy, with those discussions concerning the first principles of Government which happened unfortunately at that time to agitate the public mind.Footnote 82
In such political situations, he justly emphasized the speculative and innocuous nature of Smith's thesis. Therefore, Stewart argues in the “Account” that “the most celebrated works” written by “Smith, Quesnai, Turgot, Campomanes, Beccaria, and others” have aimed to improve societies, “not by delineating plans of new constitutions, but by enlightening the policy of actual legislators.” He reiterates that “[s]uch speculations . . . have no tendency to unhinge established institutions, or to inflame the passions of the multitude.”Footnote 83 Stewart would cautiously admit to attempting “to delineate the principles of a perfect legislation” only if such theories “ought to be considered merely as descriptions of the ultimate objects at which the statesman ought to aim.” He went on to quote a passage from the introductory part of Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth”:
In all cases (says Mr Hume) it must be advantageous to know what is most perfect in the kind, that we may be able to bring any real constitution or form of government as near it as possible, by such gentle alterations and innovations as may not give too great disturbance to society.Footnote 84
In a published version of this Account, Stewart annexes a note to the above passage and refers readers to his Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind published in the same year, 1792.Footnote 85 In this book, Stewart also discusses Hume's plan in more detail, placing emphasis on the anti-reform passages:
[W]ith respect to the greater part of the plans proposed by Utopian projectors . . . they proceed on the supposition of a miraculous reformation in the moral character of a people, to be effected by some new system of education. All such plans (as Mr. Hume has justly observed) may be safely abandoned as impracticable and visionary.”Footnote 86
Stewart is correct in distinguishing Hume's plan from others on the grounds that it does not assume any radical change of human nature or put forward an educational programme to achieve such a reformation. In this respect, according to Stewart (and Mirabeau), Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth” is quite distinct from other “utopian” writings. Considering the political situation when Stewart delivered and published these lectures, his decision to emphasize the anti-reformist aspects of Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth” is understandable. Despite Stewart's cautiousness, as Donald Winch points out, the “publication of the Elements provided his Edinburgh opponents with an opportunity to attack him for citing Condorcet['s Life of Turgot] with approval.”Footnote 87
In 1800, when Dugald Stewart started his lectures on political economy, however, the situation was less precarious than it had been in the early 1790s. In this lecture series, he highlighted the difficulty caused by the coexistence of two councils in free and large governments. After criticizing Harrington's proposal of separating deliberation and resolution, because “the senate possesses, in fact, the legislative authority,” he praised Hume's plan: “There is, indeed, a plan for that purpose, and one that seems very practicable in theory, proposed by Mr. Hume in his Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth, an Essay that contains many original and profound observations.”Footnote 88 This seems to refer to Hume's suggestions of limiting the numbers of senators to a hundred, and rendering the senate continually dependent on the ten thousand representatives who had elected them through the system of referring decisions that could not be agreed upon in the Senate to the county magistrates or representatives. Stewart's position did not change radically, to the extent that he might be considered a convert. Nevertheless, it seems clear that his approach to Hume's work shifted, perhaps in the knowledge that Hume's plan was utilized by radicals in the 1790s but had become rather less dangerous by 1800.
In the early nineteenth century, however, some almost diametrically opposed evaluations of Hume's plan emerged. Thomas Edward Ritchie, the first detailed biographer of Hume, after selecting sixteen essays under the head of “On Subjects of Constitutional Polity” from Hume's political writings and commenting on some of them, remarked,
The remaining papers possess little novelty; but from this general character, his Essay, intitled, An Idea of a perfect Commonwealth, must be excepted . . . and Mr. Hume felt an ambition to emulate the speculation of these celebrated writers [Plato, More and Harrington], by exercising his political acumen in the construction of a republican constitution.Footnote 89
On the other hand, the Monthly Review ran a review of Wyvill's Considerations on the Two-Fold Model of Election, which doubted the seriousness of Hume's plan. The reviewer claims that the “Perfect Commonwealth” essay
of Hume was an exhibition of the playfulness of his genius, and was never meant by him to be a guide for practice . . . the doctrine which he lays down is at variance with his avowed principles; and he could therefore scarcely be serious in what he advanced.Footnote 90
How, then, can we reconcile these extremely varied impressions that Hume's plan produced? The neatest clarification was given in a review article published in the Edinburgh Review by Henry Rich, a young politician.Footnote 91 He was surprised at the fact that the system of double election proposed by Hume “who, of all speculators since Hobbes, is the least favourable to popular governments should have been adopted in all the new constitutions of the last forty years.” Yet what was still more surprising to him was that
this system is embraced with equal eagerness by the two opposite parties;—one of whom delight in it as enabling them, without confusion, to bestow the right of suffrage on the many; while the other deem it the most effectual means of subjecting the exercise of that right, to those intrigues which are successfully conducted only by the few.Footnote 92
This evaluation seems to hit the mark. In fact, Hume's plan shares some significant features with more radical reforms, particularly annual parliamentary elections and equal electoral districts. Such allegedly radical aspects might have cast significant doubts on Hume's seriousness among the following generation.
As this essay has demonstrated, however, some near-contemporary French authors, many radical English writers, and reform-minded Whigs who mentioned Hume's plan, all considered the essay to be seriously advocating moderate political reforms. Although some simply utilized Hume's name and authority for their own purposes, quite a few writers, often seriously and sometimes critically, appreciated the specific merits of his plan—especially the two-tier election. Such receptions might have had little to do with Hume's own intentions in the essay, but it can at least be said that Hume's “Perfect Commonwealth” provided these reformers with an important intellectual resource and a source of authority in the turbulent decades towards the end of the eighteenth century in France and Britain. It also had some theoretical influence on the parliamentary reform movement in early nineteenth-century Britain. Specifically, the most important theoretical contribution of Hume's plan can be found in his proposal for a two-tier electoral system, which aimed not only to avoid political instabilities caused by parliamentary factions, but also to absorb radical and extra-parliamentary movements into the political system. The latter point was undoubtedly appropriate to contemporary needs.
One final and remarkable piece of writing provides further evidence for the high regard in which Hume's plan was held, not only in the immediate context of the electoral reforms of the later eighteenth century, but also as a model for the future. In the dedication “TO THE Good People of BRITAIN OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY” of the Crito or Essays on Various Subjects (1767),Footnote 93 James Burgh, a Scottish-born Whig politician, educational reformer and passionate advocate of free speech, annual elections and universal suffrage, envisaged the popularity of Hume's plan, not in his age, but in our age:
I do not absolutely insist on your adopting my scheme for forming your house of commons. You may, if you think it will be more suitable to the state of the nation in your times, take Mr. Hume’s plan. His works will be read in your times. Therefore I shall not take the trouble of writing it out. I must, however, insist, that you will not regulate your house of commons so, as to suffer six beggars to send two members into the house, who, when they are there, shall have as much weight as two of the members for your metropolis, who may represent then millions of property.Footnote 94
Contrary to Burgh's expectation, it is hard to say that Hume's plan is well read in the twentieth century or the twenty-first, even compared with his other moral, political and religious writings—still less with his philosophical works. Nevertheless, it can be said that Hume's enigmatic essay “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” continued to be a source of important intellectual and political inspiration for reform-minded people at the end of the eighteenth and in the early nineteenth centuries. But the relation of this essay to Hume's overall political philosophy continues to be a puzzle.
