Political Thought of Hume and his Contemporaries

Enlightenment Projects Vol. 2

Frederick G. Whelan

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138821637
• eBook ISBN: 9781317573791
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie politique

Intended for scholars in the fields of political theory, and the history of political thought, this two-volume examines David Hume's Political Thought (1711-1776) and that of his contemporaries, including Smith, Blackstone, Burke and Robertson. This book is unified by its temporal focus on the middle and later decades of the eighteenth century and hence on what is usually taken to be the core period of the Enlightenment, a somewhat problematic term.

Covering topics such as property, contract and resistance theory, religious establishments, the law of nations, the balance of power, demography, and the role of unintended consequences in social life, Frederick G. Whelan convincingly conveys the diversity--and creativity--of the intellectual engagements of even a limited set of Enlightenment thinkers in contrast to dismissive attitudes, in some quarters, toward the Enlightenment and its supposed unitary project.

Political Thought of Hume and his Contemporaries: Enlightenment Projects Vol. 2 contains six in-depth studies of eighteenth-century political thought, including both normative issues and examples of Enlightenment social science, including international relations and law, the problem of double standards, political economy, demography, and the causes of imperial decline. The central figure is David Hume, with substantial attention to William Robertson, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Malthus, and others.

1 Vattel's Doctrine of the State

The name of Vattel is remembered today as that of the author of a single major work, Le Droit des Gens (1758),¹ on the strength of which he is often accorded notice as one of the main figures in the early development of international law. This work repays study, however, not only for what it says about the law of nations (as what later came to be called international law was then known), but also both as a contribution to the general political thought of the Enlightenment and as important background for some issues of ongoing concern in political theory.

The emergence of a modern law of nations presupposed the idea of the modern sovereign, independent state—and of a number of such states existing side by side—as the chief or sole subject of this law. Vattel, whose work is sometimes credited with having been the first distinctively modern international law treatise, accordingly precedes his discussion of the relations between states with Book I: “A Nation Considered by Itself,”² and assumptions or doctrines regarding the state (its composition, purposes, moral and juridical status, rights, duties, and so forth) are pervasive in it. As a representative work of its time, Vattel’s Law of Nations provides an important complement to the liberal political philosophy of the Enlightenment era, which in general presupposed a world organized into sovereign states and addressed itself mainly to the question of the internal institutions and legitimacy of such states. Vattel himself embraces characteristic liberal assumptions and prescriptions, but, more importantly, the “Vattelian” doctrine of the state may be taken as the classic presentation of the concept and the practice of state sovereignty, especially in its external manifestation: the state as an independent actor in relation to other states. Since this doctrine is being subjected to renewed scrutiny in light of current concerns about such issues as war, intervention, globalization, and international justice, an examination of its sources may illuminate reflections on these matters.

Before turning to his doctrine, however, I offer some brief remarks on Vattel’s life and career and on the position of his work in relation to the political and intellectual currents of his time, unfamiliar as these matters may be to readers who might well be interested in the substance of Vattel’s doctrine.

Vattel's Career

Emer de Vattel³ (1714–67) was born and resided most of his life in the principality of Neuchâtel in Switzerland; he was therefore (somewhat anomalously) a subject of its distant hereditary sovereigns, the kings of Prussia. The son of a minister of the established Reformed Church, related to locally distinguished jurists and statesmen,⁴ Vattel was a member of the Neuchâteloise bourgeoisie, the local version of the “patriciates” that dominated the political life of most Swiss cantons in the eighteenth century.⁵ Neuchâtel regarded itself as, and is affirmed in Vattel’s work to be, a sovereign state (Vattel I.52), although it was at the same time an allied member of the larger Swiss Confederacy, or of what Vattel calls the “Swiss Republic” (Vattel II.329), whose independence of the empire had been officially acknowledged since 1648.⁶ Vattel’s Swiss patriotism is attested by various historical passages in his work, notwithstanding his career in the diplomatic service of a foreign state and the generally cosmopolitan outlook he exhibits.⁷

In the Preface (Vattel 13a) to his work Vattel makes two not altogether consistent points concerning his Swiss background as bearing on his qualifications to write on the law of nations. Explicitly he affirms that, as the citizen of a free country and therefore at liberty to speak the truth, he is “the friend of all Nations,” capable of writing on a potentially contentious subject with impartiality. Implicitly, however, Vattel identifies himself as a friend of civil or political liberty, a claim that is borne out by the generally liberal character of his political philosophy (which is thus less friendly to absolutist or dynastic claims than was that of some of his predecessors, such as Grotius), by his frequent praise of British institutions and his defense of British constitutional developments of 1688 and 1701 (Vattel I.61–62; Questions, 327), and by the subsequent warm reception accorded Vattel’s work by the British, the Americans, and the French revolutionaries.⁸

Beyond this important theme mention may be made of two other elements of the Swiss background of Vattel’s work. First, it is presumably not fortuitous that a citizen of traditionally neutral Switzerland should have been the first to attempt to state in detail the principles of neutrality as a matter of international law, together with discussion of such troublesome subsidiary matters as the passage of belligerent troops and the recruitment of mercenary troops in a neutral country.⁹ Second, there is the clearly Protestant character of Vattel’s doctrine, which is distinctly not friendly (or impartial) toward Roman Catholicism in general or papal policy and diplomacy in particular.¹⁰ The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century development of the law of nations was a predominantly Protestant project (Dutch, German, and Swiss), evidently because the conception of the sovereign state that was developed in this tradition was at variance with traditional Catholic doctrine and with vestigial papal claims to jurisdiction within nations and to the position of final arbiter of disputes among nations. One may also detect a vaguely Protestant outlook in Vattel’s basically erastian approach to the question of the public establishment of religion within states¹¹ and, less obviously, in the character of the natural-law doctrine that provides the philosophical premises for his law of nations, with its assertion of a primary right of self-preservation and its location in the private conscience of the individual person (or state) of the final authority for judging what is requisite for the exercise of this and other rights.¹²

Following university studies at Basel and Geneva and some early literary endeavors, Vattel sought a diplomatic position. Failing to obtain one with his own sovereign, the king of Prussia, Vattel turned to Saxony, where, after the end of the Second Silesian War (in which Saxony had been allied with Austria against Prussia), he received employment under the Elector Frederick Augustus II, who was also the elective king (Augustus III) of Poland. Vattel’s diplomatic career extended from his appointment in 1747 until his death, the first dozen years spent in his native Switzerland as the Saxon envoy to Bern, and the remainder, after his book made him well known, in Dresden and Warsaw.¹³ Vattel was thus in the somewhat awkward position of being in the service of Saxony when it again went to war with Vattel’s own sovereign in Prussia in the Seven Years’ War in 1756, and his duties included anti-Prussian diplomacy in Bern, conducted from his usual place of residence in neighboring Neuchâtel.¹⁴ Vattel’s sentiments as a subject toward the king of Prussia probably reflected the traditional desire of the citizens of Neuchâtel to uphold their liberties and effective independence vis-à-vis their prince; in any case, he seems to have confronted these complications with an attitude of discretion and detachment, in keeping with the spirit manifested in his book, which appeared in 1758 in the midst of his diplomatic activities.

The Law of Nations

Vattel belongs to the early, so-called naturalist period in the development of modern international law—that is, to the school whose members attempted to derive at least some of the principles of a law of nations from a prior conception of natural law, which was held to indicate standards of just conduct in addition to prescribing rules to govern the relations of independent agents (individuals or states) in a mutually beneficial fashion. This project was superseded in the nineteenth century by the work of what is known as the “analytic” or “positive” school of international law, which, skeptical of natural law or natural justice, set out simply to record and systematize the rules of international behavior customarily observed by civilized nations and approved by a consensus of statesmen and scholars.¹⁵ It is worth noting, however, that many of the rules accounted customary in the later period were ones established and defended by reference to natural law earlier, and appeal continued to be made to the views of the naturalist authors as part of the evidence of the consensus that was considered to be authoritative. There was therefore substantial continuity between the two periods, and Vattel’s work, the best known of the naturalist texts, carried authority well into the nineteenth century.¹⁶

The tradition in which Vattel worked was founded by Grotius and continued by other writers whom Vattel acknowledges: Hobbes, “whose work, in spite of its paradoxes and its detestable principles, shows us the hand of the master” (Vattel 5a); Pufendorf; Barbeyrac; and Wolff. The law of nations (in conjunction with natural law) had become established as an academic subject in Germany with the creation of a chair for Pufendorf at Heidelberg in 1660; this practice was extended to Switzerland with the teaching of Barbeyrac at Lausanne (1711–17) and later that of Burlamaqui at Geneva. The trend was resisted in France, so that, although the philosophes were familiar with the subject (especially through Barbeyrac’s editions of Grotius and Pufendorf), the systematic study of the law of nations may be said to have been a feature of the Aufklärung more than of the French Enlightenment.¹⁷ Vattel professes to admire most the work of his immediate predecessor Wolff, whose ideas on the law of nations Vattel says he seeks to make accessible to a “wider circle of readers” (Vattel 7a). Although opinions have differed on the question of Vattel’s originality, it is generally agreed that he succeeded in the task he set himself and that his diplomatic (rather than academic) experience permitted him to address specific matters of international law and diplomacy in a much more effective and practically useful fashion than any of his predecessors.¹⁸

In this chapter I wish to consider not Vattel’s technical contributions to international law but rather the political philosophy that is combined in his work with his account of the law of nations. In this respect I take the main issue to be Vattel’s arguments (combining certain clearly normative or ethical claims with descriptions of what are presented as standard institutions and practices of the time) concerning the modern state, a conception of which forms a necessary ingredient in the emergent doctrine of the law of nations and provides an accepted framework with reference to which liberal tenets regarding society and political authority were formulated. In the following sections I consider Vattel’s views on the state and the sovereignty with which it is vested considered internally, with particular attention to the question of the relation between rulers and peoples, the rejection of patrimonial kingdoms, and the distinction between sovereignty and ownership. In the final sections I consider Vattel’s doctrine of the sovereign state as viewed from an external perspective, with special attention to the conception of the state as an independent moral person.

The State and its Authority

Vattel belongs to the (by then) century-old tradition of political philosophy that combined natural law with the concepts of an original state of nature inhabited by free individuals and of a social contract as a procedure by which legitimate political authority may be constituted. His presentation of these ideas carries, on the whole, the fundamentally liberal implications that were becoming increasingly common in the eighteenth century. Natural law is understood as a body of obligatory moral principles, prescribing basic duties and rights for individuals (and, suitably adapted, for states) in their relations with one another. Unlike some of his predecessors (such as Pufendorf, Burlamaqui, and Wolff), Vattel does not present his law of nations in conjunction with an elaborate natural-law philosophy, in which questions regarding the epistemological status, justification, and obligatoriness of the natural law are treated in detail. The ethical structure of Vattel’s doctrine (for example, the distinctions between “internal” and “external”’ obligation, or between “perfect” and “imperfect” rights and duties) appears to be its most derivative (Wolffian) part, and his claims about natural law appear to be assumptions, or perhaps a kind of “shorthand” for moral premises that he simply finds plausible or attractive.¹⁹

The law of nature applies, in the first analysis, to human beings, who are, Vattel affirms, “by nature free and independent” and who therefore may be imagined to have been living, “before the establishment of civil society,” in a state of nature (Vattel, Intro. 4). This opening claim reveals an important element of Vattel’s intellectual lineage and sets the terms for his understanding of the internal constitution of a state. Two points may be made concerning Vattel’s treatment of this familiar concept. First, he does not dwell (in the manner of Hobbes or Locke) on the putative conditions obtaining in the state of nature among individuals, alluding to this only as a formal prelude to a contractual account of civil society. Rather, Vattel is more concerned (following Wolff and Pufendorf, and remotely Hobbes) to assert that separate states or nations, which may be thought of as similarly free and independent “persons,” may also usefully be considered as existing together in a state of nature (Vattel, Preface, 7a; II.201; III.188). At the international level the state of nature refers to an actual and permanent condition, and it therefore is conceptually even more significant in this area. Second, the state of nature among individuals is understood (contra Hobbes) as a rudimentary social condition—a “natural” or “human” as distinguished from a “civil” or “political” society—since individuals recognize both duties to others (under natural law) and a need for the society of others in attaining their own happiness or “perfection” (Vattel, Intro. 10). This doctrine, which served for Vattel and others to make the Hobbesian conceptual framework more palatable,²⁰ is not without consequence. Although states are less sociable than individuals, a universal “human society” continues to exist even after the establishment of sovereign states, and Vattel rejects certain means in warfare (such as poison and assassination) on the ground that they would be destructive of this larger society, precluding the restoration of trust and good relations following the cessation of hostilities (Vattel III.155). The law-of-nations doctrine of jus in bello implies that not everything is permissible in the state of nature.

Individuals in the state of nature have both strong, primary duties of self-preservation and self-perfection (that is, self-development or the realization of their potentialities, leading to the attainment of higher forms of happiness), and “imperfect” duties to assist others in their pursuit of these same objectives, as well as the rights that Vattel takes to be implied by these duties. Since individuals require mutual assistance in the performance of these duties, they have a further duty to participate in the “natural society” of mankind; in addition, natural law strongly recommends that individuals unite into “civil societies” as a remedy against the “degeneracy of the majority” that is revealed in the state of nature (Vattel, Preface, 9a). Since individuals are by nature independent, a (true) civil society can come into existence only as the result of an act of association, a unanimous “social compact” (Vattel I.16) in which each associate yields up his “natural right of directing his conduct according to his own reason and good pleasure and of seeing for himself that justice [is] done him” (Vattel I.38), agrees to work for the “common good of all” (Vattel I.16), and submits to a common authority in matters concerning the safety and happiness of all. Civil society so conceived, with the authority and the civil obligations...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to Volume 2
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• 1 Vattel's Doctrine of the State
• 2 Robertson, Hume, and the Balance of Power
• 3 Hume on the Laws of Nations, Chastity, and Double Standards
• 4 "Contrary Effects" and the Reverse Invisible Hand in Hume and Smith
• 5 Population and Ideology in the Enlightenment
• 6 Explaining Imperial Decline in Eighteenth-Century Scottish Thought
• Bibliography
• Index