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Although David Hume's stature as a philosopher has rarely been questioned, his claims as a political theorist have fared less well. Jefferson showed deep hostility towards Hume's ideas, while John Adams could find agreement with only a few points. Later opinion has been less vehement but still reserved. Thomas Huxley thought Hume's political writings suggestive, but on the whole marred by an unabashed desire for literary success. In Sir Leslie Stephen's judgment Hume was guilty of a "cynical conservatism" that was at once superficial and unhistorical.More recent studies, such as those of Sabine and Halévy, have established more securely Hume's place in political thought but have left certain ambiguities. Sabine has coupled Hume with Burke as an opponent of eighteenth-century rationalism, while Halévy viewed him as a forerunner of the "philosophical radicalism" of Bentham, Adam Smith, James Mill, and Ricardo. To have fathered squabbling children is always something of an embarrassment, but particularly so when one is, like Hume, temperamentally averse to taking sides. It is true, nonetheless, that if a temporary distinction is made between Hume's doctrine and his influence, it is possible to maintain that his influence worked in two quite different directions. His inquires into causation, the role of reason, and the nature of moral judgments helped eventually to undermine the natural law structure of eighteenth-century liberalism, while his emphasis on utility as the test of institutions contributed an important ingredient to Benthamite liberalism.

A rough measure of the resilience of the British Conservative party is indicated by the relatively rapid comeback from the electoral defeat of 1945. Instead of a twenty years' exile, like that of American Republicans, the Conservatives were out of office only six years. To be sure, their return to power was by a very slim parliamentary majority, representing less than half the popular vote cast in the General Election of 1951. And the ups and downs of the Conservative Goverment's popularity, as reflected in by-elections during 1952 and 1953, have shown little more than a capacity to hold the existing narrow margin. For many it must still seem difficult, as it did for Professor Herman Finer in the late 1940's, "to conceive a policy which, within some decades even, might win back for the Conservatives enough votes to support a solid government." Naturally the Conservatives themselves have hardly accepted the fate of serving only an occasional interregnum between periods of Labour rule. Almost entirely without the spectacular issues which have characterized recent electoral successes of American Republicans, the British Right has sought to refute the assumption that it is incapable of presenting a sufficiently attractive political alternative to socialism.

To the student of comparative political theory, few things are more fascinating than the contrast not only between different ages but also between different countries in one and the same age. The greatest advances in the collective thinking of Western humanity have been made coöperatively by men of every nation; and in every age all unite to give to that age its own distinctive character; yet each people contributes something of its own national genius to the spirit of the age. He, then, who would understand a country and the pattern of its people's thinking does well to inquire in what way it has deviated from the thinking of other nations in particular epochs.Whoever looks at early nineteenth-century America must be struck by its aloofness from many of the main currents of Western thinking. In the great Revolution of the eighteenth century, it had not been thus. The Lockean and Blackstonean tradition of the right of Englishmen to protect their property through representative organs; Rousseau's concept of equal natural rights of every individual and the right of the sovereign people in convention to reconstitute society according to its general will; Montesquieu's advocacy of checks and balances as safeguards of liberty; Quesnay's physiocratic cult of land as the natural source of wealth and power; Adam Smith's analysis of the relationship between national policy and private commerce; deism in religion; and associationism in psychology—these were among the many trends in the Age of Reason that came to a focus in the revolt of the thirteen colonies and the establishment of the United States.