The Scottish Enlightenment's reflection on mixed government

Abstract

The nature and supposed excellence of Britain’s mixed constitution was a popular theme of Eighteenth-Century political thought. It is perhaps surprising then that one of the major groupings of social and political thinkers produced by eighteenthcentury Britain – what has become known as the Scottish Enlightenment – devotes relatively little attention to this matter. The current paper seeks to examine some of the little that they do have to say on this topic and demonstrate that it fits neatly into the broader approach to social science developed in Scotland at this time. Figures such as David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and John Millar are now widely recognised as among the founding fathers of social science. Their innovative approach to what Hume called ‘the science of man’1 was grounded in a desire to provide a detached and theoretical explanation of the development and operation of political institutions in general. This meant that they were predisposed to see the development of the mixed form of government in Britain as part of a wider projected explanation of government as a general phenomenon. One consequence of this is that, regardless of their personal recognition of the benefits of the British Constitution, their commitment to the philosophical examination of government in general leads them to adopt a detached and academic voice in what was otherwise a highly partisan discussion. David Hume identifies the materials of the science of man as lying in a «cautious observation of human life»2 as it is and has been lived. Such ’experimental’ data will, after careful collation and corroboration, act as evidence from which generalisations of a scientific nature can be made3. This mode of comparative analysis is also deployed by Smith, Millar, Ferguson, Robertson and Kames. It is theoretical rather than narrative history. The histories written by Scottish thinkers of this period are intended to serve as a basis for what we would regard as social theoretical generalisations or explanations. As a result they have a particular bee in their bonnet about