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“ART. VIII. — 1. An Oration pronounced at Cambridge, before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, August 27,1824. By EDWARD EVERETT. Published by Request. 8vo. pp. 67. Boston. 2. An Oration delivered at Plymouth, December 22, 1824. By EDWARD EVERETT. Boston. 8vo. pp. 73. Cummings, Hilliard and Co,” The North American Review, vol. 21, no. 47 (April 1825), pp. 417–40; selection from pp. 418–19.
[Jared Sparks]
Hume’s character and writings were frequent subjects for discussion in The North American Review, one of the most important magazines in the United States in the nineteenth century. In the passage reprinted below, Jared Sparks (1789–1866) discussed Hume’s essay, “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences.” Sparks was a notable clergyman, historian, editor, and a graduate of Harvard. In 1825 Sparks was the owner and editor of the North American Review. William Cushing attributes Sparks as the author of this review in Index to The North American Review (Cambridge, 1878), p. 36. On The North American Review see Neal L. Edgar, A History and Bibliography of American Magazines, 1810–1820 (Metuchen, NJ, 1975), pp. 203–206; Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, Volume II: 1850–1865 (Cambridge, 1938), pp. 219–61. On Jared Sparks see Baxter Adams, The Life and Writings of Jared Sparks (1893); Richard J. Cox, “Jared Sparks,” ANB, vol. 20, pp. 420–21. For an account of the essay “On the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences” within Hume’s world view, see John B. Stewart, The Moral and Political Philosophy of David Hume (Westport, 1963), esp. chapter xi, “The Plot of Time.”
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Hume long ago attempted to demonstrate, that it was not possible for the arts and sciences, or those acquisitions, which constitute the refinement of intellect and manners, to take their rise under any other than a free government. He lays it down as an axiom, that in a community there must be laws before the desire of knowledge; for laws give security, this prompts to curiosity, and hence inquiry, which is the prelude to knowledge. An absolute despotism is in its nature without laws; the will of the sovereign is supreme, and as no rules exist from which the people can anticipate the mode, in which his judgment or caprice will induce him to decide and act, it follows that no sense of security, no settled confidence in the governing power remains. The case will not be altered, into whatever number of departments a despotic government may be divided. The head may delegate a portion of his authority to subordinate governors, but each of these, having no laws to guide him, will be a despot, and the security of the people will be in the same state of jeopardy, as if there were no such division of power. The moment you establish laws, you weaken the despotism, and give the people some influence in their own government. These laws will be binding on the rulers and the ruled, forming a known system, and thus far giving security. If they are oppressive, the people can take measures to lighten the burden, by making it expedient for the governing power to adopt modifications and improvements. Such was the process in Rome, when the authority of the consuls was absolute, and they decided all causes without any other statutes than their own opinions. The people grew impatient, the decemvirs were chosen, and the laws of the twelve tables promulgated, which became gradually enlarged and formed into a system, that answered all the purposes of a government essentially free. It is, moreover, impossible for the arts and sciences to take root in a despotism, because, till they have gained some degree of ascendency, the monarch himself must be unenlightened, and ignorant of the modes of establishing forms of government suited to embrace the complicated operation of laws, and the machinery necessary for preserving a balance among the various subordinate departments.
Now, whether this argument of Hume may not be a little too specious, to be set down as a practical axiom in politics, we shall not decide. The theory appears sufficiently sound, and is probably borne out by facts as far as history records them; but when we go back so remotely into the ages that have been, and search for the origin of governments, and the first dawnings of the arts and sciences, we grope in a darkness too profound to enable us to fortify our discoveries by any substantial historical testimony. As all governments must have originated in the consent of the people, it is hardly probable that any forms have long subsisted wholly independent of law, or so despotic as not to afford security enough to give the mind leisure to become enamored of knowledge, and freedom to pursue it within certain limits. Nor could there have been occasion forcibly to narrow these limits; the progress of acquirement must have been gradual, and rarely so rapid as to alarm the jealousy of despotism. Hence knowledge and laws sprang up together, and the question, as to which took the lead in the primitive forms of government, if it be not idle to ask it, will hardly be answered with the present imperfect light, which the world has on the subject.