Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary

ESSAY XIII

Essay_451-500.indd 488 12/27/11 9:18 PM ESSAY XIII OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE IN the former essay, we endeavoured to refute the speculative systems of politics advanced in this nation; as well the religious system of the one party, as the philosophical of the other. We come now to examine the practical consequences, deduced by each party, with regard to the measures of submission due to sovereigns. 1 '[Passive obedience is the doctrine that it is not lawful , under any pretense whatsoever, to take arms against the king or those who act under the king's authority. This doctrine was held, in the seventeenth century, by the court party, and in the eighteenth by a segment of the Tory party. Hume grants that this doctrine should not be followed when doing so would threaten the public safety, but he defends it as a better practical rule, under most circumstances, than the Whig doctrine of resistance. This essay should be Essay_451-500.indd 489 12/27/11 9:18 PM 489 OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE As the obligation to justice is founded entirely on the interests of society, which require mutual abstinence from property, in order to preserve peace among mankind; it is evident, that, when the execution of justice would be attended with very pernicious consequences, that virtue must be suspended, and give place to public utility, in such extraordinary and such pressing emergencies. The maxim, fiat Justitia & ruat Ca:lum, let justice be performed, though the universe be destroyed, is apparently false, and by sacrificing the end to the means, shews a preposterous idea of the subordination of duties. What governor of a town makes any scruple of burning the suburbs, when they facilitate the approaches of the enemy? Or what general abstains from plundering a neutral country, when the necessities of war require it, and he cannot otherwise subsist his army? The case is the same with the duty of allegiance; and common sense teaches us, that, as government binds us to obedience only on account of its tendency to public utility, that duty must always, in extraordinary cases, when public ruin would evidently attend obedience, yield to the primary and original obligation. Salus populi suprema Lex, the safety of the people is the supreme law. 2 This maxim is agreeable to the sentiments of mankind in all ages: compared with Hume's discussion of the same topic in the Treatise, 3.2.9 ("Of the Measures of Allegiance"). In the Treatise, the doctrine of passive obedience is called an "absurdity"; but in this later and more popular treatment of the matter, which was written during or shortly after the Jacobite rising of 1745, Hume takes pains to say nothing that would discredit the salutary principle of obedience to law.] 2[Locke uses this motto as the epigraph to his Two Treatises ofGovernment. Compare also the beginning of chapter 30 of Hobbes's Leviathan: " The office of the sovereign , be it a monarch or an assembly, consisteth in the end, for which he was trusted with the sovereign power, namely the procuration of the safety ofthe people. . . . But by safety here, is not meant a bare preservation, but also all other contentments of life, which every man by lawful industry, without danger, or hurt to the commonwealth, shall acquire to himself."] Essay_451-500.indd 490 12/27/11 9:18 PM 490 ESSAY XIII Nor is any one, when he reads of the insurrections against NERo• or PHILIP the Second, so infatuated with partysystems , as not to wish success to the enterprize, and praise the undertakers. Even our high monarchical party, in spite of their sublime theory, are forced, in such cases, to judge, and feel, and approve, in conformity to the rest of mankind. Resistance, therefore, being admitted in extraordinary emergencies, the question can only be among good reasoners, with regard to the degree of necessity, which can justify resistance , and render it lawful or commendable. And here I must confess, that I shall always incline to their side, who draw the bond of allegiance very close, and consider an infringement of it, as the last refuge in desperate cases, when the public is in the highest danger, from violence and tyranny. For besides the mischiefs of a civil war, which commonly attends insurrection; it is certain, that, where a disposition to rebellion appears among any people, it is one chief cause of tyranny in...