“Sweden Is Still a Kingdom”: Convention and Political Authority in Hume’s History of England

Abstract

To balance a large state or society, whether monarchical or republican, on general laws, is a work of so great difficulty, that no human genius, however comprehensive, is able, by the mere dint of reason and reflection, to effect it.-Hume, "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences," 124 Andrew Sabl's Hume's Politics.Coordination and Crisis in the History of England is an impressive tribute to the Tacitus of the eighteenth century.His study offers a reading of the History of England "as if it were a treatise on this one subject: how conventions of political authority arise, change, improve by various measures, and die" (7). 1 Hume's History, according to Sabl, is much more than a mere narrative of the gradual emergence of a stable constitutional monarchy on the English soil: it contains a systematic political theory that foreshadows some crucial devices of contemporary coordination theory.Hume the historian thus propagates an ingenious "liberalism of enlargement" (as Sabl calls it) from which we can still profit."Teasing out a coherent political theory from a 1.3 million words book" is of course no sinecure.Sabl admits that his study is more "analytic" than "humanistic" (18). 2 He focuses on the dynamics of conflict that yield conventions of political authority, and abstracts largely from a more moral reading of the History, such as we

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