"David Hume - Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

so many classes and orders of slavery. From such a situation,
no improvement can ever be expected in the sciences, in the
liberal arts, in laws, and scarcely in the manual arts and
manufactures. The same barbarism and ignorance, with which the
government commences, is propagated to all posterity, and can
never come to a period by the efforts or ingenuity of such
unhappy slaves.

But though law, the source of all security and happiness,
arises late in any government, and is the slow product of
order and of liberty, it is not preserved with the same
difficulty with which it is produced; but when it has once
taken root, is a hardy plant, which will scarcely ever perish
through the ill culture of men, or the rigour of the seasons.
The arts of luxury, and much more the liberal arts, which
depend on a refined taste or sentiment, are easily lost;
because they are always relished by a few only, whose leisure,
fortune, and genius fit them for such amusements. But what is
profitable to every mortal, and in common life, when once
discovered, can scarcely fall into oblivion, but by the total
subversion of society, and by such furious inundations of
barbarous invaders, as obliterate all memory of former arts
and civility. Imitation also is apt to transport these coarser
and more useful arts from one climate to another, and make
them precede the refined arts in their progress; though
perhaps they sprang after them in their first rise and
propagation. From these causes proceed civilized monarchies;
where the arts of government, first invented in free states,
are preserved to the mutual advantage and security of
sovereign and subject.

However perfect, therefore, the monarchical form may appear to
some politicians, it owes all its perfection to the
republican; nor is it possible, that a pure despotism,
established among a barbarous people, can ever, by its native
force and energy, refine and polish itself. It must borrow its
laws, and methods, and institutions, and consequently its
stability and order, from free governments. These advantages
are the sole growth of republics. The extensive despotism of a
barbarous monarchy, by entering into the detail of the
government, as well as into the principal points of
administration, for ever prevents all such improvement.

In a civilized monarchy, the prince alone is unrestrained in
the exercise of his authority, and possesses alone a power,
which is not bounded by any thing but custom, example, and the
sense of his own interest. Every minister or magistrate,
however eminent, must submit to the general laws, which govern
the whole society, and must exert the authority delegated to
him after the manner, which is prescribed. The people depend