Page:Hume - Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects - 1809 - Vol. 1.djvu/50

42 upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is in a great measure removed; since a man is sure to be approved of by his own party, for what promotes the common interest, and he soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries. To which we may add, that every court or senate is determined by the greater number of voices, so that, if self-interest influences only the majority (as it will always do), the whole senate follows the allurements of this separate interest, and acts as if it contained not one member who had any regard to public interest and liberty.

When there offers, therefore, to our censure and examination, any plan of government, real or imaginary, where the power is distributed among several courts, and several orders of men, we should always consider the separate interest of each court, and each order; and, if we find that by the skilful division of power, this interest must necessarily, in its operation, concur with the public, we may pronounce that government to be wise and happy. If on the contrary separate interest be not checked, and be not directed to the public, we ought to look for nothing but faction, disorder, and tyranny from such a government. In this opinion I am justified by experience, as well as by the authority of all philosophers and politicians, both ancient and modern.

How much therefore, would it have surprised such a genius as Cicero or Tacitus, to have been told, that, in a future age, there should arise a very regular system of mixed government, where the authority was so distributed, that one rank, whenever it pleased, might swallow up all the rest, and engross the whole power of the constitution. Such a government, they would say, will not be a mixed government. For so great is the natural ambition of men that they are never satisfied with power, and if one order of men, by pursuing its own interest, can usurp upon every other order, it will