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

'Habet subjectos tanquam suos; viles, ut alienos.'[3] He
governs the subjects with full authority, as if they were his
own; and with negligence or tyranny, as belonging to another.
A people, governed after such a manner, are slaves in the full
and proper sense of the word; and it is impossible they can
ever aspire to any refinements or taste of reason. They dare
not so much as pretend to enjoy the necessaries of life in
plenty or security.

To expect, therefore, that the arts and sciences should take
their first rise in a monarchy, is to expect a contradiction.
Before these refinements have taken place, the monarch is
ignorant and uninstructed; and not having knowledge sufficient
to make him sensible of the necessity of balancing his
government upon general laws, he delegates his full power to
all inferior magistrates. This barbarous policy debases the
people, and for ever prevents all improvements. Were it
possible, that, before science were known in the world, a
monarch could possess so much wisdom as to become a
legislator, and govern his people by law, not by the arbitrary
will of their fellow-subjects, it might be possible for that
species of government to be the first nursery of arts and
sciences. But that supposition seems scarcely to be consistent
or rational.

It may happen, that a republic, in its infant state, may be
supported by as few laws as a barbarous monarchy, and may
entrust as unlimited an authority to its magistrates or
judges. But, besides that the frequent elections by the
people, are a considerable check upon authority; it is
impossible, but, in time, the necessity of restraining the
magistrates, in order to preserve liberty, must at last
appear, and give rise to general laws and statutes. The Roman
Consuls, for some time, decided all causes, without being
confined by any positive statutes, till the people, bearing
this yoke with impatience, created the decemvirs, who
promulgated the twelve tables; a body of laws, which, though,
perhaps, they were not equal in bulk to one English act of
parliament, were almost the only written rules, which
regulated property and punishment, for some ages, in that
famous republic. They were, however, sufficient, together with
the forms of a free government, to secure the lives and
properties of the citizens, to exempt one man from the
dominion of another; and to protect every one against the
violence or tyranny of his fellow-citizens. In such a
situation the sciences may raise their heads and flourish: But
never can have being amidst such a scene of oppression and
slavery, as always results from barbarous monarchies, where
the people alone are restrained by the authority of the
magistrates, and the magistrates are not restrained by any law