metaphysics of Burke, so far as one may use a term he would himself have
repudiated, are largely those of Hume. The place of habit and of social
instinct alongside of consent, the perception that reason alone will not
explain political facts, the emphasis upon resistance as of last resort,
the denial that allegiance is a mere contract to be presently explained,
the deep respect for order--all these are, after all, the fabric from
which the thought of Burke was woven. Nor is there in Bentham's defence
of Utilitarianism argument in which he would have recognized novelty.
Herein, at least, his proof that morality is no more than general
opinion of utility constructs, in briefer form, the later arguments of
Bentham, Paley and the Mills, nor can their mode of statement claim
superiority to Hume's. So that on either side of his work he foreshadows
the advent of the two great schools of modern political thought. His
utilitarianism is the real path by which radical opinion at last found
means of acceptance. His use of history is, through Burke, the ancestor
of that specialized conservatism begotten of the historical method. If
there is thus so much, it is, of course, tempting to ask why there is
not more. If Hume has the materials why did he fail to build up a system
from them? The answer seems twofold. In part it is the man himself. His
genius, as his metaphysics show, lay essentially in his power of
destruction; and the man who gave solipsism to philosophy was not likely
to effect a new creation in politics. In part, also, the condition of
the time gave little stimulus to novelty. Herein Hume was born a
generation too early. Had he written when George III attempted the
destruction of the system of the Revolution, and when America and France
combined to raise again the basic questions of politics, he might have
done therein what Adam Smith effected in his own field. But the time had
not yet come; and it was left to Burke and Bentham to reap where he had
sown.