Page:Essays, Moral and Political - David Hume (1741).djvu/46

 induce the Candidates to employ Force, or Money, or Intrigue, to procure the Votes of the Electors: So that such a Choice will give no better Chance for a superior Merit in the Prince, than if the State had trusted to Birth alone to determine their Sovereign.

may therefore be pronounced as an universal Axiom in Politics, That an hereditary Prince, a Nobility without Vassals, and a People voting by their Representatives, form the best, and. But in order to prove more fully, that Politics admit of general Truths, which are invariable by the Humour or Education either of Subject or Sovereign, it may not be amiss to observe some other Principles of this Science, which may seem to deserve that Character.

may easily be observ'd, that though free Governments have been commonly the most happy for those who partake of their Freedom; yet are they the most ruinous and oppressive for their Provinces: And this Observation may, I believe, be fix'd as a Maxim of the kind we are here speaking of. When a