accordingly recommended as the euthanasia of the British constitution.
Not even the example of Sweden convinced him that a standing army might
exist without civil liberty being endangered; and he has all the noxious
fallacies of his time upon the balance of power. Above all, it is
striking to see his helplessness before the problem of national
character. Mainly he ascribes it to the form of government, and that in
turn to chance. Even the friend of Montesquieu can see no significance
in race or climate. The idea, in fact, of evolution is entirely absent
from his political speculation. Political life, like human life, ends in
death; and the problem is to make our egress as comfortable as we can,
for the prime evil is disturbance. It is difficult not to feel that
there is almost a physical basis in his own disease for this love of
quiet. The man who put indolence among the primary motives of human
happiness was not likely to view novel theories with unruffled temper.

Hume has an eminent place among economists, and for one to whom the
study of such phenomena was but a casual inquiry, it is marvelous how
much he saw. He is free from the crude errors of mercantilism; and
twenty years before Adam Smith hopes, "as a British subject," for the
prosperity of other countries. "Free communication and exchange" seems
to him an ordinance of nature; and he heaps contempt upon those
"numberless bars, obstructions and imposts which all nations of Europe,
and none more than England, have put upon trade." Specie he places in
its true light as merely a medium of exchange. The supposed antagonism
between commerce and agriculture he disposes of in a half-dozen
effective sentences. He sees the place of time and distance in the
discussion of economic want. He sees the value of a general level of
economic equality, even while he is sceptical of its attainment. He
insists upon the economic value of high wages, though he somewhat
belittles the importance of wealth in the achievement of happiness.