"David Hume - Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

My first observation on this head is, That it is impossible
for the arts and sciences to arise, at first, among any people
unless that people enjoy the blessing of a free government.

In the first ages of the world, when men are as yet barbarous
and ignorant, they seek no farther security against mutual
violence and injustice, than the choice of some rulers, few or
many, in whom they place an implicit confidence, without
providing any security, by laws or political institutions,
against the violence and injustice of these rulers. If the
authority be centered in a single person, and if the people,
either by conquest, or by the ordinary course of propagation,
encrease to a great multitude, the monarch, finding it
impossible, in his own person, to execute every office of
sovereignty, in every place, must delegate his authority to
inferior magistrates, who preserve peace and order in their
respective districts. As experience and education have not yet
refined the judgments of men to any considerable degree, the
prince, who is himself unrestrained, never dreams of
restraining his ministers, but delegates his full authority to
every one, whom he sets over any portion of the people. All
general laws are attended with inconveniencies, when applied
to particular cases; and it requires great penetration and
experience, both to perceive that these inconveniencies are
fewer than what result from full discretionary powers in every
magistrate; and also to discern what general laws are, upon
the whole, attended with fewest inconveniencies. This is a
matter of so great difficulty, that men may have made some
advances, even in the sublime arts of poetry and eloquence,
where a rapidity of genius and imagination assist their
progress, before they have arrived at any great refinement in
their municipal laws, where frequent trials and diligent
observation can alone direct their improvements. It is not,
therefore, to be supposed, that a barbarous monarch,
unrestrained and uninstructed, will ever become a legislator,
or think of restraining his Bashaws, in every province, or
even his Cadis in every village. We are told, that the late
Czar, though actuated with a noble genius, and smit with the
love and admiration of European arts; yet professed an esteem
for the Turkish policy in this particular, and approved of
such summary decisions of causes, as are practised in that
barbarous monarchy, where the judges are not restrained by any
methods, forms, or laws. He did not perceive, how contrary
such a practice would have been to all his other endeavours
for refining his people. Arbitrary power, in all cases, is
somewhat oppressive and debasing; but it is altogether ruinous
and intolerable, when contracted into a small compass; and
becomes still worse, when the person, who possesses it, knows
that the time of his authority is limited and uncertain.