English
The focus of this week’s readings shall deal with the standpoint of Hume in differentiating civil liberty in both the republican government and monarchies. He argued that civil liberty in its republican sense can lead towards the greater enjoyment effortlessly by majority of civilized governments and European monarchies. Liberty refers to the security of a nation under a system of general laws. This can be illustrated on the basis of his personal observation that in order to achieve liberty in politics, the government should be free and to improve for the better in terms of the managing foreign and domestic affairs. Hume argued that that the balance of power is the key to success in politics (Civil Liberty, p. 3). This will require the participation of the internal police by observing the rule law in a civilized society. Hume further argued that if the government will observe civil liberty, the citizens should be allowed to take an active part in sharing the political power with the state. He praised the republicans for maintaining their position of being a “government of laws, not of men” (Civil Liberty, p.4). This simply means that no single person is allowed to create laws and to make a decision based on the same law. Thus, no individual can be considered exempted or above the law. This is opposed to the monarchial type of government wherein the nobles cannot be arrested unless ordered by the king. It is only the king who shall have the power to create laws and decide when to enforce the law. At some point, modern monarchies became civilized due to republican invention and the rule of law. Although civil liberty in its complete sense remains to be republican in nature, the civilized monarchies are able observe civil liberty in minimal degrees to ensure order, organization and constancy.
References
Hume, David. “Of Civil Liberty,” in Essays, Moral, Political and Literary, ed. E. F.
Miller. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1987.
