moral character. He opposed the ever-increasing centralizationrnand consolidation demanded by the modern state. The commercialrninterests centered in London, which was the base ofrnsupport for Pitt and Wilkes, were the hub of a vast mercantilernempire conducted by war and financed by public debt. Humernopposed big cities, big government, empire, mercantile wars,rnand public credit. His solution was to reduce the size of allrnthese enormities by dismantling the empire east and west andrnby following a policy of free trade. In July 1768, when “Wilkesrnand Liberty” was in full swing, Hume entertained a fantasy thatrnties together the themes just mentioned: “These are finerndoings in America. O! how I long to sec America and the EastrnIndies revolted totally & finally, the Revenue redue’d to half,rnpublic Credit fully discredited by Bankruptcy, the third of Londonrnin Ruins, and the rascally Mob subdu’d.” Over a yearrnlater, the same fantasy appears in a letter to Strahan: “Notwithstandingrnmy Age, I hope to sec a public Bankruptcy, the totalrnRevolt of America, the Expulsion of the English from the EastrnIndies, the Diminution of London to less than a half, and thernRestoration of the Government to the King, Nobility, and Gentryrnof this Realm.” Hume’s strong opposition to empire wasrnshared by Francis Hutcheson and Adam Smith, the otherrnfounders of the Scottish Moral Sentiment school of ethics, butrnthat is another story.rnHe did not think that American independence would muchrnaffect British manufactures. “A forced and every day more precariousrnMonopoly of about 6 or 700,000 Pounds a year of Manufactures,rnwas not worth contending for,” and Britain couldrn”preserve the greater part of this Trade even if the Ports ofrnAmerica were open to all Nations.” Not only was war unprofitable,rnHume did not believe that it could be won; or if it could,rnthat the Americans could be held by anything but a scorchedearthrnpolicy and a reign of terror which a liberty-loving regimernsuch as Britain could neither justify morally nor afford. It isrnworth quoting in full I lume’s sketch of the barbarous path thatrnBritain would have to follow in subduing the colonists: “ArbitraryrnPower can extend its oppressive Arm to the Antipodes; butrna limited Government can never be upheld at a distance, evenrnwhere no Disgusts have interven’d: Much less, where such violentrnAnimosities have taken place. We must, therefore, annulrnall the Charters; abolish every dcmocratical Power in everyrnColony; repeal the I labeas Corpus Act with regard to them; investrnevery Governor with full discretionary or arbitrary Powers;rnconfiscate the Estates of all the chief Planters; and hang threefourthsrnof their Clergy. To execute such Acts of destructivernViolence twenty thousand Men will not be sufficient; norrnthirty thousand to maintain them, in so wide and disjointed arnTerritory.”rnThis was the path a more ruthless Lincoln would follow, withrnbetter success, two generations later in coercing the Southernrnstates (whose economics depended on free trade) back into thernhigh-tariff, protectionist, New York-Chicago industrial axisrnknown as the “American System,” i.e., Henry Clay’s union ofrnbig government with big business. Erom an economic pointrnof view, the Southern case was stronger than that of therncolonies. The new British taxes were not heavy, and there wasrnwidespread support for keeping them reasonable. Indeed, thernfamous tea tax was so contrived that, even with it, the colonistrnpaid less for tea than the English. The colonies seceded not becausernof exploitation but because of the prospect of it. ThernSouth seceded because of both. Most American exports camernfrom the South, which exported about three-fourths of what itrnproduced. According to antebellum Northern economists, thernSouth accounted, at times, for three-fourths of federal revenue,rnwhich contained a surplus most of which a Northern majorityrnappropriated in order to improve its industrial infrastructure.rnThe North could absorb only a small part of what the Southrnproduced. The result was a steady flow of wealth from thernSouth to the North. Even worse. Southern trading partnersrnwhose manufactured goods were effectively shut out wererncompelled to look for staples elsewhere, thereby depressingrnSouthern wages.rnA form of consolidated mercantilism more severe than anythingrngenerated by the London of Pitt and Wilkes triumphedrnwhen the army of Northern Virginia was finally brought to bayrnat Appomattox. The South was not only pinned to the Unionrnwith bayonets, its social and political order was totally destroyedrnin a manner similar to what Hume predicted would happen tornthe colonies in any successful attempt by a “free state” to coercernthem back into the British Union. In addition to 12 years ofrnmilitary occupation, plundering, and ideological “Reconstruction,”rnthe tariff was kept at around 40 percent for all but twornyears until Woodrow Wilson was elected President; and Southernrnindustrial development was discouraged by discriminatoryrncommercial regulations such as the pricing of steel and freightrncharges that discriminated against Southern manufactures.rnThe South had a flourishing economy in 1860. The ConfederaternStates had the third largest economy of any nation on thernEuropean or American continent. It led every nation in thernworld in per capita railroad mileage except the North. Underrndiscriminatory trade and taxing policies, the South became arncolony of a Northern industrial republican empire. As thernNorth industrialized, the number of farms during the period uprnto 1930 steadily decreased. In the South, the number actuallyrnincreased. But these were tenant farms, offering little morernthan a form of serfdom. In I860, some 80 percent of farms inrnthe Deep South were operated by owners; by 1930 only 37 percentrnwere owned, and most of these were heavily mortgaged.rnMany of the unjust regulations leading to these conditions werernfinallv declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in thern1940’s.rnThese were just the sort of discriminations that Hume said arnrepublican empire would contrive “by restrictions on trade, andrnby taxes, so as to draw some private, as well as public, advantagernfrom their conquests.” Indeed there is a way in which Hume’srnpolitical philosophy predicts the collapse into civil war of thernsort of regime the United States had become by 1860.rnIn his essay “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth,” I lume arguesrnagainst the traditional doctrine that republics can exist onlyrnin a small territory such as a city-state. On the contrary, he believesrnthat the best republic would be an extended one, and hernsketches out a national regime composed of “county republics”rnsimilar to the “ward republics” of Jefferson’s ideal regime.rnHume’s extended republic is not inconsistent with what he saidrnagainst large government over a vast territory. Government ofrnthis sort he calls “empire,” and the extended republic falls considerablyrnshort of that. He limits it to the size of England orrnErance. However, the confederation of American states in 1787rnwas an empire. And everything he wrote on politics points tornan argument against consolidating a vast political order of thatrnsort into a single nationalist regime. Insofar as inferences canrnbe drawn from political principles, it is reasonable to think thatrnHume would have supported the Articles of Confederation as arn22/CHRONICLESrnrnrn